Little OT. New Hard Drive

[PacManFan]

I've got a new Hitachi 167gig HD, and I'm trying to figure out how to partition it to the max. capacity. FDisk reports the size wrong, and several FDisk replacements only recognize 127 gigs. Does anyone know of a good freeware tool to partition a 167 gig drive?

Thanks,
-PMF

[2600]

It's not the program, it's your PC.  Most chipsets only support up to 128GB.
You need a ATA133 controller to support >128GB or use SATA.

[PacManFan]

The motherboard claims to support it, I just need to get a good fdisk replacement program.  any suggestions?

[Katana Man]

Actually, it's not the PC,

[daywane]

I used maxblast 2.0
if you go to maxtor web you will see that is made by maxtor.
3.0 would not work but 2.0
I bout the same drive from Tigerdirect.com and no software or hardware came with the drive.
at least it sounds like the drive
was a pain at first to set up

[2600]

Does it have to be done in DOS?  Can you not stick it in a linux or Windows system?
Don't get me wrong I use DOS a lot, but I imagine you have another system laying around.  It's not like you are going to format it with a crap load of 2GB Fat16 partitions.

[jcrouse]

I went through the same thing with a WD 250GB that I was trying to do a fresh install of Windows 2000 on. The utilities with the disk would not handle the job and Windows 2000 wouldn't handle anything over 127GB. Nor will Windows XP until SP1 (I think). If your trying to set it up as one partition and a do a fresh install of your OS, I think you will need XP SP 1 or SP 2 on CD. Of course you also need a bios for your mobo that will recognize all the capacity.

John

[MnMCaputo]

pacmanfan,
             if you are using the harddrive on a system that already has windows xp on it, you can just plug in the harddrive, have correct jumper setting, then right click on my computer, manage, disk managment, then it will show you the drive, it will show as unnamed drive at first, but you just right click on it again, and it will have format options.  same should work for 2000, not sure about 98 (actually not sure 98 will even support that big of a harddrive)

[screaming]

You're using an fdisk program that recognizes partitions beyond FAT32, right (Windows 2000/XP/Linux)?

FAT32 has a hard limit of 127GB. You can get more partitioning with an NTFS/EXT2 aware fdisk but you could run into trouble if you try and format it as FAT32. If there's a way to hack around that 127GB limit with FAT32, you'll definitely run into problems if you don't have at least an ATA133/SATA card.

Check out this page if you don't believe me or the other people that posted the same info.

-Steve

[Katana Man]

Here you go PacManFan,
  Here is the updated fdisk.exe that can handle up to 180GB
ftp://ftp1.fkkt.uni-lj.si/newfdisk.zip
If you need a boot floppy, there are plenty here:
http://bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

If you don't use this updated Fdisk.exe, then you'll have to use some other software. Here is IBM/Hitachi's site:
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

[gonzobrian]

Try free fdisk http://www.23cc.com/free-fdisk/

Edit:  Sorry it only does up to 128gb.

[PacManFan]

Thanks everyone for the help!
Last night, I got my new Hitachi 167 Gig HD partitioned and formatted. I had to install it into my desktop 'puter, used "Partition Magic"(forgot I had that), formatted, re-installed it into my HTPC/MAME 'puter, Installed W98, then WinXP Pro (Long story there).

What I found out was that FAT32 only supports up to 127 gig drives, For larger drives (>48bit addressing) you need to format for NTFS.

Now I'm one step closer to using my 52" Projection TV as a Game Station / PVR.

I'll have to post a picture of the 'puter I built. I used a case from a VCR, It looks sweet.

Thanks again everyone for you help!

-PMF