Cannot access full drive

W

withask

Geek Trainee
I have an IBM 300PL with a 12.5 GB hard drive which is now ancient (6 years old). I am now getting "disk full" messages. On investigating I find that onlythe first 1.9GB is being used. I suspect that this has something to do with Windows and their FAT 16 and FAT 32, which is beyond me! The machine originally had Win 95 but I upgraded(?) to Win ME four years ago.
Is there any way to rectify this without losing the stuff on the hard drive? I dont have any means of backing up this stuff otherwise I would re-format the drive.
One of the experts here may know of a work-around by tweaking Windows.
Your help would be appreciated.
 
i would say that your useing FAT16 (faily old now) what you need to do is convert your system from FAT16 to FAT32 there is a converter included with winMe, just install the convertor, if its not already installed, convert your drive (bearing in mind that you may only be able to resize your drive to 8.4 Gb, depending on your BIOS) then you need some partitioning software (e.g. Partition Magic from Powerquest (1st url), Partition Expert from Acronis (2nd url) to resize your drive (partition)


http://www.symantecstore.com/dr/sat...arch&API5=www.google.co.uk&ABCODE=&CACHE_ID=0

http://www.acronis.com/enterprise/products/diskdirectorsuite/
 
Thanks for your quick response. I have looked at the ME installation disk, their instruction is to use the FDISK function to format to FAT32. But this would lose all of my data?
I do have a 10GB hard drive that I rescued from an old computer and wondered if I could use that in some way to backup my data? But this may be too difficult and I dont know if you can transfer data from a FAT16 formatted disk to a FAT32 formatted disk.
Thanks for your url's.
 
It's been a long time since I used 9x so what i am going to say may not be entirely correct :D

FAT16 is used by Windows 95 (first edition) and can only support a maximum 2GB hard drive. You can upgrade your disk to FAT32 without losing your data.

Go to Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Drive Convertor (FAT32).

If it's not there then it may not be installed. In which case do this:

Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs > Windows Setup > Accessories > Should be around there somewhere. When you find it make sure it's ticked and press OK
 
right, yes winMe does support both FAT16 and FAT32 you could use the other drive as a backup, but it would be much easier to do it with some specallised software (not the way i'd do it, but i understand exactly how a computer does things, especially win9x) do you want me to explain how i would do it, the unofficial but effective way)
 
hang on a bit megamaced, if he did a simple convert to FAT32 he'd still need to resize the drive with partition magic or partition expert or hard disk manager or some other program i've forgot
 
let me ask, is money a problem for you ($50- about £35) if it's not then click here
if it is i can tell you how to do it on the cheap, but that software is worth having anyway
 
I have tried megamaced idea but under ME 's system tools there is no drive convertor. If I reload win95 the use the drive convertor then reload winME would this release the whole drive without using Fdisk or some other partition tool?
I like donkey42's idea of trying the 'unofficial but effective way' and I hope he will explain.
 
donkey42 said:
hang on a bit megamaced, if he did a simple convert to FAT32 he'd still need to resize the drive with partition magic or partition expert or hard disk manager or some other program i've forgot
Click to expand...

Whoops! :ohah:

Well spotted donkey

The drive convertor won't resize your drive - so although you'd have FAT32, it'd still be 2GB!

You will have to use some 3rd party partitioning tool like donkey suggested.

FDISK will completely erase your data - only use FDISK if you are prepared to start over from scratch
 
withask are you sure you want to try my 'unofficial but effective way' it is the way i would do it (because i can't afford the software) so it's not exatly the way it should be done but it will work :smahd: ,if in doubt, give it a clout.
 
i don't know what you mean - but i thought it was funny, do you want to know how to sort it 'unofficial but effective way' (my way)
 
hi withask, was typing instructions out an realised that you'd be better of not knowing how to do it manually (too many thing can go wrong, can go wrong, can go wrong) the best way to go is by using the software that the url i specifyed earlier to both convert from FAT 16 to FAT 32 and resize the partition, you could also unistall some software or windows components
 
donkey42 said:
do you want to know how to sort it 'unofficial but effective way' (my way)
Click to expand...

Well I want to know anyway! You've had me in suspense for far too long! :P

What's the unofficial way?
 
Thanks donkey42. I looked at the Ranish site which looks interesting but I was hoping for a more straightforward solution. One that I would feel in control of? :(
 
thats why i said it would be easier to get the software in the urls i provided, if you don't KNOW exactly what your doing with software like ranish your best off not bothering, because you can do your computer a lot of damage - it would be easy enough to sort by someone who knows, i recommend you purchase some partitioning software, like the urls i sent you, there no easy way thats free with anything, that why i was reluctant to tell you
 
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