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missing 4 gig

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DavidA:
Here's one for the hardware buffs.

I recently had a major crash on my main computer. Lost all the aplications, operating system etc.  Just by luck I had copied all my pictures and files data to flash drives just before it happened. Main loss is all the bookmarks and my address book.

Hey ho.

So I put in a spare six Gig hard drive and fired it up.

It tried to load mandrake Linux;  and didn't quite manage it.

'So',  says I, 'strong medicine needed here'.

I put  a DOS startup disk in the floppy.  typed in Format C:,  and let it do it's thing.

Having DOS on the hard drive is always nice.  So I then installed DOS 6.2  ,

So far so good.

Pulled out the last of the floppis and re-booted.

The first page of the Mandrake appeared !

WHAT !  So, switch off (pulled the mains plug.  It's the only way on that machine; no on/off switch.

Put the DOS start up disc in,  re-booted  and entered DIR C:

Just the command .com etc that you normally get,  and , of course, a DOS folder.

Next,  type in scandisk. run it. 

It showed a TWO Gig drive.

Things are getting stranger by the minute.

Tried MSD. it showed two drives.  A and C.  But C only has two gig.

What has happened to the other four ?  Below is the exact wording from MicroSoft Diagnostics..


A:  Floppy Drive, 3.5"  1.44M
       80 Cylinders,  2 heads
       512 Bytes/Sector , 18 Sectors/Track

C:  Fixed Disk.  CMOS  Type 47
       261 Cylinders,  255 Heads
       512 Bytes/Sector,  63 Sectors/Track

     CMOS Fixed Disk Parameters
       784 Cylinders,  255 Heads
       63 Sectors/Track

LASTDRIVE=E


The FAT is FAT16,  which I believe is good up to 8 Gig.

I suspect that sometime in the past I have divided this drive into two or more partitions. And that the Mandrake is lurking on one of these partitions.  Abd when I Formatted it (they) weren't included in the operation.  When I boot up it goes to this partition.

But why doesn't it show up ?

Now is the worst time in the world to have misplaced my Partition Magic.


HELP.

Dave

Swarfing:
Dave

DOS can not see the native drive space from linux. If you have a fully loaded dos boot disk? start again.

Boot off the floppy and at the command prompt run ' FDISK /MBR', this will replace the the master boot record so that dos can now see all drive. Reboot again then reformat and try your linux install again  :D

I have to say though 6GB is not a lot of space for your install?

Hope this helps

Paul

DavidA:
Paul,

Thanks,  I'll try it now.

Dave

DavidA:
Didn't work.

  I still get the following.

Display Partition Information.

Current Fixed Drives: 1

Partition  status     Type   Volume Label   Mbytes  System    usage

    C:1        A         PRI DOS    MS-DOS_6   2047     FAT16      33%

Total disk spacw is 6142 Mbytes  (1 Mbyte =  1048576 bytes)

I know it's only a small drive,  but I only want to run DOS on it.  Maybe also IBM OS/2;  just to go retro.   

It would the nice to have the full size available though.  I'll get a bigger one later.

Dave

Brass_Machine:
Just skimming the post... Maximum disk size with fat16 is 2GB

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc940351.aspx

Eric

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