# Solved: 40GB Hard Drive appears as 500mb? Dos 6.22



## lszanto (Mar 10, 2008)

I recently installed Dos 6.22 and windows 3.1 on an old computer I found lying round my grandparents place. It has 32mb ram and an intel 430fx, and although it came with a 3gb hard drive this was corrupt and didn't work so I installed a 40gb western digital hard drive. Installation went smoothly and the computer is now running very well, booting up in around 10 seconds and with all the apps/programs I need. My only concern is that my hard drive which is meant to be 40gb shows up as around 500mb. I have gone into fdisk and partition magic 4.0 but both of these seem to think that I cannot expand my hard drive and then i try to create a new partition or expand the existing one they see the hard drive as full. Is this because I am using an old version of dos that cannot detect larger hard drives? And is there anyway to fix this?

thanks in advance, Luke


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## gophersnake (Mar 5, 2006)

I'm sure others here will be more familiar with the different kinds of File Allocation Tables available, their respective limits, and what versions of DOS and Windows will support them. While you're waiting for a better answer, I'd recommend investigating what kind of FAT your system is now using, what your current DOS is able to support, and (if appropriate) how to switch to a different type of FAT.


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## TheOutcaste (Aug 8, 2007)

The BIOS on those old systems may not be able to see more than 504MiB on a disk without using a Dynamic Drive Overlay. And, DOS6.22 and Win3.1 are limited to 2GiB partitions.

You should check to see if there is a BIOS update for that system to allow it to recognize larger partitions, or check the drive manufacturer's web site for Drive Overlay software.

You'll still be limited to 2GiB logical drives, but with 24 letters available for drive letters, you can make a bunch of 2GiB drives to use the entire space.

Might be better to find a cheap 500-1000MiB drive for this system, and save the 40GB for a newer machine, or find a IDE controller card that will let that system use larger drives.

Jerry


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## lszanto (Mar 10, 2008)

EDIT: I've managed to fix it using a boot disk and fdisk, thanks for your help!


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## TheOutcaste (Aug 8, 2007)

Walked away for a few minutes, and didn't see you'd fixed it before I hit submit. Glad it's working. Here's what I was posting for you , in case it might be useful:

DOS 6.22's fdisk command should be in the C:\DOS folder. It's limited to 8GiB, so with a 2GiB primary, the extended partition will be limited to 6 GiB, so you can have three 2GiB drives in the extended partition.
Use it to display the current partition info to see what it thinks is on the drive. If there is an extended partition shown as NON-DOS filling up the rest of the drive, that might be why you can't expand the partition, but I would think Partiton Magic would be able to deal with that

To use any more of the drive would require a drive overlay, and 3rd party partitioning software. Even then, I'm not sure if MS-DOS 6.22 would be able to see anything over the 8GiB point, I really don't remember.

If you need to redo the primary partition (which will delete everything), you'd have to use a boot disk. If it's a Win95 OSR2 or Win98 disk, be sure you say NO to the "enable large disk support" question, then you can be sure not to make the partition too large for DOS to see. Create just a primary, re-install DOS, then use the DOS 6.22 fdisk to create the extended partition.

HTH

Jerry

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