Did I format incorrectly?

Sean · Post by **Sean** » Tue Mar 26, 2002 10:15 pm

Weird. Ok, i spend all day re-installing windwos, clean. Then, i find out that my 20gb HD (Which fdisked as one drive at around 19867GB) is only 4.57 GB?! Umm, no...I think the format did something it wasn't supposed to do. What can i do? I don't have a ghost program, and don't have the money to buy one. I was thinking I could just get everything running, but not install programs (like, get all the important data off the old HDD). Then ghost. re-format, and than restore the ghost image? Would that work? (If I had Ghost).

Anyone know where I can get a free version of norton Ghost, or some trial that works. i am downloading the Corperate Trial, but I don't think it allows you to restore.. Ahh, what now?

b-man1 · Post by **b-man1** » Tue Mar 26, 2002 11:10 pm

did you accidentally select "N" when prompted by fdisk for the "Enable large block addressing" or whatever it's called? it's the first prompt that appears when it detects your HD being larger than 2 or 4GB...

.02

Sean · Post by **Sean** » Tue Mar 26, 2002 11:46 pm

Nope, I always press enter on that, where Y is automatically selected.. (If you mean right when you open FDISK.). i know it's not FDISK, because when i go in, it says I am using 100% of the drive at around 19.867 GB

blade · Post by **blade** » Wed Mar 27, 2002 12:07 am

That sure sux.

So it shows as about 20 gigs in the bios but in windows it's just 4.57gb? You may have to fdisk again.

I've never used ghost but you can get a trial version here. Not sure if it gives you a free usage or not.

bluewhale · Post by **bluewhale** » Wed Mar 27, 2002 1:36 am

I've seen this but not often enough to remember what caused it

How old is the BIOS? What version of windows? and is LBA enabled in CMOS?
It's odd... The boot diskette you used to fun FDISK and FORMAT... what specific version is it? Could it be a W95 boot diskette? I don't believe format by itself wouldn't cause this kind of problem.

Pt

Sean · Post by **Sean** » Wed Mar 27, 2002 7:26 am

Well, before this, I had the same drive with two partitions.. one around 5 gb and the other around 15gb. Both worked fine. I decided to redo it because my family doesn't understand computers as well as I do. I will just empty the old drive, and ghost to it, and do what I mentioned above.

Yes blade, that is EXACTLY what it is. But, it ONLY shows that amount of space in fdisk. The drive itself says 4.87 GB. Very odd if you ask me.. i also got that trial version and will try it out.

bluewhale, it's a Win 98 SE boot disk.

fearfox · Post by **fearfox** » Wed Mar 27, 2002 10:28 am

Sean what OS you running i had same trouble with windows nt. Sometimes what will have to do is to erase both partitions and try to recreate them under win 98se. Another thing you can do is get a formating utility from the vendor of hardrive. I had to do that with my 60gb hd win nt and win 98 se said it only had 3gigs. Have you ran different operating systems on hd. If you have nothing important on hardrive i would suggest using the format utility from the vendor of your hardrive from website. Basically it will erase your hardrive to the original way it came from company.

Sean · Post by **Sean** » Wed Mar 27, 2002 11:43 am

Nope, I have only run Win 98 and 98 SE. nothin else. I ghosted it with the trial to the old HD (luckily I noticed before our new size was above 1.5 GB (our whole new install was only 1.2 GB still). I am re-formatting as we speak (I am on my computer). All is well. I will restore the image, and no one will know what hit them. I think i will be buying an OEM version of Ghost soon....

Thanks for all the suggestions. I knew this had to happen for a reason.

Sean · Post by **Sean** » Wed Mar 27, 2002 11:52 am

DAMN! DAMN that ghost Trial!! I can't load my

:ping image!! AHH!!

What now? Am I screwed? it says something about the Ghost Console? Ahhh, dang..

Sean · Post by **Sean** » Wed Mar 27, 2002 1:39 pm

Ok, I can still recover it. But, god DANG! i wish I could have had this done at NOON!! ARARRRGG!!! This is really pissing me off.

Now, guess what? I get in (Cause I might be able to use Ghost Explorer to get back my image) but I RE-INSTALL damn Windows AGAIN! (This time it formatted correctly) and I go through all that crap, and come to find out that The TrialWare STILL thinks I have the damn trial installed!! Oh well...

Also.. Anyone know if I can buy Norton System Works for $13 from NewEgg and if that will include a full version of ghost? Is it just like a small thing? Because we can still recover our Ghost Image, but they say with a LICENSED version of Ghost. Will that work? if not, where can i get a cheap verion of Ghost? i really don't want to spend $70 + tax on it.. :-\

Sean · Post by **Sean** » Wed Mar 27, 2002 3:08 pm

Jeez!! I got it!! If anyone wants to know, here's what i did.

1. Installed The Trial on my computer.
2. Copy the ghost explorer over the network (or floppy will work)
3. restore all your main files (everything BUT windows). And restore them all in the original spots (my documents in root, etc..)
4. Than rename Windows to Windows2
5. Use a boot disk, go into DOS.
6. Rename windows to windows3 (rename c:\windows windows3)
7. rename windows2 to windows.

DONE!

I am so damn smart!

Of course, it took me a few tries until I learned I couldn't move/copy directories..

Ah, FINALLY, done!

blade · Post by **blade** » Wed Mar 27, 2002 6:20 pm

Good deal.

Is it showing the correct space on the hard drive now?

I had that happen before and the only way I could fix it was to low level format. But with mine it also showed incorrectly in the bios.

Sean · Post by **Sean** » Wed Mar 27, 2002 7:10 pm

It's all good now.