# 40 GB Hard drive only showing 2GB capacity in My Computer.



## Tron (Aug 30, 2003)

I have just replaced my 20GB hard drive with a new 40GB but upon loading it up with all my programs I only got to 2GB before I ran out of memory, its all new ... motherboard, RAM etc, all of which was working perfectly with the previous HD. 
It shows 40GB capacity in BIOS but only 2GB in my computer.
Any help would be greatly appreciated


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## Bob Cerelli (Nov 3, 2002)

How was the drive partitioned. From the little information given, it sounds like you have single FAT16 partitions (since the limit of FAT16, even on a 40 gig drive, is just a 2 gig partition).

If that is the case, you need to:

1. Boot with a Win98 disk
2. Re-run FDISK and select to use large hard drive support
3. Delete the current partition
4. Recreate a new one that is the full size of the hard drive. 

But if you have Win95, it will only recognize FAT16 partitions and in that case, you will either need to upgrade or be stuck with a lot of 2 gig partitions (too late for me to do the math ;-)


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## Tron (Aug 30, 2003)

I'm running win ME can I do that with the ME disc?
I'm not sure about partitions, I just plugged it in clean and reinstalled ME following the prompts.


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## Bob Cerelli (Nov 3, 2002)

Sure as long as the disk you make has FDISK and FORMAT.


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## klnaj (Dec 19, 2004)

Tron, go to this link and it gives you detail information how to used fdisk to format your hard drive. You might need to print this out.

http://www.computing.net/howto/advanced/partition/


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## ceri sheeran (Aug 15, 2003)

Hi,

In My Computer selct your hard disk c: right clock and select properties.

Look at the test next to File System. If this says FAT or FAT16, then you have partitioned the hard disk this way. FAT or FAT 16 is limited to 2GB and cannot go past this ( in any way I know or have read of ).

You have two choices:-

Backup everythiing you need and start again or use a Partition Management prgoram such as Partition Magic.

To start again.

You need to download a Win 98 SE floppy boot disk image from http://www.bootdisk.com. Run the file to create the bootable floppy.

Boot from the floppy disk

At the A:> prompt type

FDISK

Say YES to the question re large disk support This is absolutely critical.

Delete all exisiting partitions and create the necessary number. Two is probably your best bet. One for Operating system say 10 to 20 GB and the other for all your data.

Partition Magic is a mater of RTFM.

You now need to change to the CD for your Operating system and type "setup"

hth

Ceri


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## Bob Cerelli (Nov 3, 2002)

Information on how to use FDISK can be found at:
http://www.onecomputerguy.com/install/fdisk.htm

Topics covered are:
Overview and Getting Started
Partitioning a New Drive - Single Large Partition
Partitioning a New Drive - Multiple Partitions
Deleting a Single Partition
Deleting Multiple Partitions
Deleting a NTFS Partition
Fixing the Master Boot Record


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## Tron (Aug 30, 2003)

Well I bumbled my way successfully through that one, thanks very much for all your help people :up: , I'm sure glad that I've avoided another trip to see those rogues down at the computer store again.


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