hard drive

can someone plse help me. i have got a 40gb hard drive on
my computer as a slave drive but it shows up as a 2gb hard
drive and it only allows me to store 2gb worth of files. i
have tryed this h/drive on another computer and it still
shows up as 2gb. this there anyway that i can get this
h/drive clear so that i can use the whole 40gb.

thks
marty

[Jon_Hildrum]

Most likely the drive was partitioned using FAT16 which limits partition
size to about 2G.

Try Fdisk /status from a dos prompt and see what it says.

Your options are as follows:
1. You could make more partitions in the remaining space. It will not affect
your present partition. When using FDISK say yes when it asks about large
drives. Next make an extended. Make all the remainder of the drive an
extended partition then generate one or more logic drives. These additional
drives will need to be formatted before they can be used.

2. You could delete the existing partition and repartition the drive. In
this case all data, programs and application on the existing drive would be
lost.

3. You can use a third party application. Convert your existing partition to
FAT32 increase its size and make and extended dos partition in the remaining
space with logic drive. What size you use for each is your choice.

--
Jon Hildrum
DTS MVP

www.hildrum.com
> wrote in message
...
> can someone plse help me. i have got a 40gb hard drive on
> my computer as a slave drive but it shows up as a 2gb hard
> drive and it only allows me to store 2gb worth of files. i
> have tryed this h/drive on another computer and it still
> shows up as 2gb. this there anyway that i can get this
> h/drive clear so that i can use the whole 40gb.
>
> thks
> marty

[Ron Badour]

Open My Computer, right click the 2 gb drive and select properties. Does it
say for a file system: fat or fat 32? If it says fat, you partitioned the
drive with fat 16 which is limited to 2 gb. You can either clear off the
drive, use fdisk to remove the partition and then create a new fat 32
partition(s). Or, you can use a partitioning program to increase the
partition on the drive--I use:

BootIt Next Generation is available from: http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/
and it does partitioning, makes a compressed image, does many other
partitioning chores and is a boot manager. It is not quite as easy to use
as Partition Magic but it is half the cost and has more features. Unlike
the crippled PMagic demo, BING is a *full function* demo you can try for
FREE for 30 days. The web site has a lot of support articles.

If you need information on how to partition and format the drive, see this
article:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=255867
--
Regards

Ron Badour, MS MVP for W98
Tips: http://home.satx.rr.com/badour
Knowledge Base Info:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?pr=kbinfo

> wrote in message
...
> can someone plse help me. i have got a 40gb hard drive on
> my computer as a slave drive but it shows up as a 2gb hard
> drive and it only allows me to store 2gb worth of files. i
> have tryed this h/drive on another computer and it still
> shows up as 2gb. this there anyway that i can get this
> h/drive clear so that i can use the whole 40gb.
>
> thks
> marty