32G Limitation with a MAXTOR 80G Drive?

[TonyV]

Scandisk and defrag were hanging on my secondary drive (MAXTOR 80G ATA) so I called their Tech Support for assistance. They had me run MAXBLAST3, their drive uitility, and now my hard drive only shows 32 G in WINDOWS 98SE. Before I called, WINDOWS was showing 80G.

MAXTOR said I should upgrade my BIOS but I don't understand since the BIOS was recognizing the full 80Gs before I ran their utility. This is a GATEWAY ESS 450--the boot drive is 13G and the secondary was/is 80G......

Any suggestions? Do I really need to upgrade the BIOS? This makes no sense to me if it was fine before this started.

MAXTOR will send a replacement drive since it is still under warranty but then I need to go thru the hassle of installing the replacement drive....any way to resolve this problem.

Thanks for any help!!!!!!

[degsy]

Welcome

What did you do with the MAXBLAST software?

Do you have data on the drive that you need saving or can it be partitioned & formatted?

[TonyV]

The drive does not have any data and I have the current version of the Maxblast software III--I was thinking of using the version that came with the drive when I installed it 2 years ago -- Maxblast II to see if that wouold give me back the 80G.

Should I consider FDISK? If so, how do I go about that process? I think that MAXTOR had me do that when I called Tech Support last week.....

[degsy]

What may have happened is that The Maxblast software has created a 32gb partition and the rest of the space is unallocated.

You can use FDISK to check by viewing the drive information.

[TonyV]

I checked FDISK and it shows that I have a 32G drive.

MAXTOR sent me a different drive since the original is still covered by the warranty. Do you think I should install this new one and start over again with the Maxblast III utility???

Please advise.....Thanks for your help--I'm a newwbee at this but hopefully I can learn alot from you folks!

[degsy]

Hi,
I've used the Maxblast software, but I created several partitions, basically for personal preference.

I would recommend to the the Maxblast software instead of FDISK.

[TonyV]

I tried using Maxblast III to partion the drive. I used the Advanced option but when I go to partiton it, I only have 32G available to me.....I don't know what happened to the rest of the drive???? Any suggestions????
MAXTOR is sending me a new drive since they claim that the firmware on mine may be corrupt...

Anybody ever have this type of problem??????

[degsy]

Only other thing would be a Jumper Setting that would limit the drive, but Maxtor support should have mentioned that

[Dewbacca]

No real help here, but none of my win98 machines will recognize anything over 32 gig... and was told it was a limitation of my motherboards.

You never mentioned if you ever actually had 80 gig of info on it to start with... so could it have been an error in the first place and "repaired" with the latest software you used?

If anyone out there can set up hard drives on win98/ older motherboards.. I'd like to read more about that... especially seeing as its very hard to get 32 gig drives. I'm tired of 40 giggers reading 32 gig myself.

[bburkhardt]

I am building a dual amd64 computer and my Msi K8t800 pro is not reading any of my 2 maxtor 7200 rmp 80gb hard drives. i tested out other hard drives from my other computer and my motherboard picked them right up. Why is this? what can i do?

[degsy]

Hi,
you maybe better off starting a new thread

[roy_parker]

Can you flash your bios ? This will help in most cases by updating your BIOS to newer version, some time it will be required to update some soft too, but bios is on fist place.