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I was given an old Packard Bell comp and it is showing the hard drive at 619MB, the label on the drive says 1.6GB. Didn't the old comps have a 2.1GB limit ? I ran fdisk and it still shows at 619MB.

Check the jumper settings. From what I remember, old hd's were notorious for acting up with the wrong jumpers.

The only jumper settings on this old drive are Slave/Master/CS.

Depends how old. Some 486 and early Pentium systems might not recognize anything much bigger than 500Mb.

It may have a hidden restore partition on it as well.

The drive is indeed 1624MB with one 618MB partition. I put it in my main comp and deleted the 619MB partition and then created one 1624MB partition. Now if I could only find the mobo drivers for it. I had Win95b installed on it but it had a yellow "!" on the IDE controller. Therefore, no CD drive is shown in "My Comp".

Feel free to search for drivers. It is a Packard Bell Legend 245. Onboard graphics, ISA riser, ISA sound card (unknown), 14.4 modem connected to the mobo with a small ribbon cable, 1.44 floppy, 5.25" floppy, CD-ROM, 1.6gig hd.

You have 95 installed in it now? If so the problem with the IDE driver is not just a driver issue. That was a major pain when it first came out.

When you DO find the right driver you'll need to do a registry hack. 95 would PERMANENTLY disable the IDE controller (forcing DOS compatibility) if the IDE driver ever failed to work properly, in order to keep from corrupting data.

Even after you install the right driver, it won't work until you change a registry setting. More details here (this applies to 95,98 & ME): http://the-predator.tripod.com/dell/win ... l#win1-2-2

HOWEVER the simplest solution is to install Win98 or ME on it. They should have drivers for any IDE controller from that era. If they don't then it's REALLY an obscure mobo.

You might have some luck here: http://www.driverguide.com/

Originally posted by FlyingPenguin

HOWEVER the simplest solution is to install Win98 or ME on it. They should have drivers for any IDE controller from that era. If they don't then it's REALLY an obscure mobo.

You funny. It would take two days to install Win98/ME on this old dinosaur. It's only a 486SX33 (33MHz). It was given to me and it was DOA. I have revived it by un-soldering the original battery and soldering a standard battery holder from an old ATX board. Seems to be working, I set the date in the bios yesterday and it was unplugged all day. Fired it up and it shows the correct date and time.

486? Why even bother.