From: Andrew Webber (awebber_at_sgml-mercs.com)
Date: Tue Nov 16 1999 - 11:14:30 EST
On Mon, 15 Nov 1999 23:52:57 -0500, Bill Morrow wrote:
>if I sold that drive to you, send it to me and let me test
>it in my 600 here..
>if theres something wrong with it, i'll get you another..
>(shipping on me)
>if i did NOT sell you that drive, i'll check it out and,
>if there is nothing wrong physically with it, i'll send
>it back with one big 10gig partition... (shipping on you)
>i know shiping from canada might be a bit costly, so
>if you want to, get everything ready and give me a call
>and i'll walk you through it..
Thanks, Bill! I really appreciate the offer. The disk is in fact
the one you sold me, and I'll post up-front that there's nothing
wrong with it. Now on to the details...
>be sure, first, that you have the most recent bios..
When it was suggested to be a BIOS limitation, I did wonder if the
latest BIOS patch from ibm.com would fix it. But I read and read
the documentation and couldn't find anything that said the latest
patch would increase the HD size limit.
So last night I did the BIOS patch, changed the 10gig back to FAT
(I'd made it FAT32, but the Recovery CD instructions say it won't
like that), booted from recovery disk and did the Win95 load (left
it running and went to bed).
This morning I checked and Partition Magic now reports it to be
"9582Mb" which is close enough and certainly more than 8! So it
really was the out-of-date BIOS. (I bought the Win98 upgrade but
intelligently didn't rip the shrinkwrap).
>if there is nothing critical on the drive, i suggest
>running fdisk (delete all partitions and set up one
>big partition) and then reformatting it with one huge
>10gig, fat32 partition.. use the /s switch to put a
>system on the drive.. then reload win9?... if you
>try to use the recovery CD, it'll hand you 4 or
>5 partitions..
Yeah I know, but I thought it would be easier to use the recovery
CD and then Partition Magic, than try to get some of the TP
applications off the CD. And it's the only copy of Win95 I have.
(I do have this upgrade version of Win98 still shrinkwrapped... ;).
>i can see no reason, other than an unusually old bios
>or a physical problem with the drive or an incredibly
>silly mistake (we ALL make them!<g>) that would keep
>that drive from delivering the full 10gigs.. you will
>need a win95B or newer boot diskette with the usual
>utilities on it.
I'm always willing to admit my mistakes. I have to admit I should
have been more alert to the "it's a BIOS limitation" answers a few
weeks ago and done that update first. On the other hand, I really
need a fresh Win95 install (NFS software died, random blue screens
that cause no problem, some other incidental things), and I've been
putting it off so I could apply it to the 10gig rather than messing
with a possibly unstable configuration on the 6gig. Being more
alert might have stopped me from buying and returning Win98, on the
other hand I'd have wanted it in case that _didn't_ fix the
problem, and I'm desperately trying not to tinker with what's on
the 6gig!
>note: the full 10gigs (decimal) works out to about 9.34
>real gigabytes (binary or hex or octal)...
Then I'd say I'm seeing the full amount at 9582Mb.
Thanks again to Bill and everyone else!
andrew
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