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Ext HDD's greater than 137GB under Win ME

piikea

By piikea
in Windows 9x/ME

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piikea

piikea

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Now you gave me an idea: enter Device Manager, select each of those optical media drives, then go to Properties and check whether they are assigned fixed letters. Even if they aren't, assign one to "Z", and the other to "Y", so they get out of the way, and let's see what happens.

If it makes any difference - when my other ext HDD is plugged in it is correctly assigned the next available drive letter after the 2 optical drives.

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piikea

piikea

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Now you gave me an idea: enter Device Manager, select each of those optical media drives, then go to Properties and check whether they are assigned fixed letters. Even if they aren't, assign one to "Z", and the other to "Y", so they get out of the way, and let's see what happens.

In any event, I did this but still no go. I'm not sure whats going on.

* edit:

actually the partitions hadn't been created. I swear they appeared before but not when I chacked again now. So, I tried to create again in FreeFDISK & they "appeared" to be created IN the FreeDISK DOS Prompt (but still assigning the 1st & 2nd partitions the already taken optical drive's letters), it said required restart which I did but then it says "no partitions defined".

** 2nd edit:

Ok, I finally got it assigned a drive letter and recognized by the OS. Went into Device Manager & under options there were 4 boxes to be checked - 3 were but the one by "Removable" wasn't, so I checked it, which made the "Reserve Drive letters" box not grayed out so I was able to manually assign it the next avail letter, then restarted & voila. IF it was like that before I'm not sure but I think I would've tried it before now.

Anyway, after going in so many circles doing this I have to re-figure out the proper way to format it!

Edited by piikea
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dencorso

dencorso

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Wow! Congratulations! Now you have the partitions and the drive letters to them! :thumbup

So, if I were you I'd select each partition (it appears as a "disk" because it's a logical disk) at a time by righ-clicking on it in the Windows Explorer and select "Format". Let's give the Windows Explorer a chance to do what it should do.

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piikea

piikea

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Wow! Congratulations! Now you have the partitions and the drive letters to them! :thumbup

So, if I were you I'd select each partition (it appears as a "disk" because it's a logical disk) at a time by righ-clicking on it in the Windows Explorer and select "Format". Let's give the Windows Explorer a chance to do what it should do.

It "did" but gave me an error at the very end. however its recognized as a drive & showing at 93GB so if its "ok" or not idk. Its only showing as 1 drive tho' instead of the 4 partitions I (thought) I created! ugh

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dencorso

dencorso

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It's giving you one single drive probably because the partitioning didn't stick.

So let's get back to basics. Try diskman as per jaclaz's post #29. Let's see what it finds. If it doesn't find the partitions, do partition the disk again, using it, this time. Don't forget to unplug after finishing partitioning, and then replugging it so that the new partitions are recognized properly, for you to be able to format it.

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piikea

piikea

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It's giving you one single drive probably because the partitioning didn't stick.

So let's get back to basics. Try diskman as per jaclaz's post #29. Let's see what it finds. If it doesn't find the partitions, do partition the disk again, using it, this time. Don't forget to unplug after finishing partitioning, and then replugging it so that the new partitions are recognized properly, for you to be able to format it.

I agree with the guy in the 3rd thread jaclaz posted: Diskman4 was too complicated & has no "help" file. I ran it but couldn't figure out how to use it.

Edited by piikea
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dencorso

dencorso

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Then let's try with the one I can guide you about. Get The Ranish Partition Manager 2.40 and run it, from a DOS Box.

So here go some comments on RPM:

1) When you run it in a DOS Box, after you say OK to its dire red warning about being unsafe to be used in Windows, you'll see this kind of display:

part.gif

2) Then (still with no pendrive attatched) circulate once through all the HDDs, using <F5>, to see how it presents your HDDs. Then hit <Esc> to quit and dismiss the DOS Box.

3) Attach the pendrive, wait for it to be displayed in Windows Explorer, copy a smal file to it (whatever file) just to cause it to be added to the device list, Close the Win Explorer, run again RPM, circle again through the HDDs and bingo, you'll see one new drive present. It's quite common that RPM barks at the current partitioning and complains that there is a partition in the pendrive that overlaps something. Don't worry, hit OK, and it'll then present you an HDD with no defined partitions, because it is ignoring what it considers wrong (but the current format and partitioning still are in the pendrive, because you did not write anything to it, just yet). Because of your previous tour without the pendrive, you'll now recognize everyone of your drives and be sure which is the new one (= your pendrive).

4) As soon as you're satisfied everything is making sense, start partitioning.

5) Use only version 240, while you're still getting used to RPM.

Read "USB HDD" instead of pendrive, for your case, in the quote above. And, of course, since your HDD isn't partitioned nor formatted, you may ignore the part about copying to it any file. Don't start partitioning your HDD yet. Instead, post a screenshot of what RPM shows about it.

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piikea

piikea

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Then let's try with the one I can guide you about. Get The Ranish Partition Manager 2.40 and run it, from a DOS Box.

Read "USB HDD" instead of pendrive, for your case, in the quote above. And, of course, since your HDD isn't partitioned nor formatted, you may ignore the part about copying to it any file. Don't start partitioning your HDD yet. Instead, post a screenshot of what RPM shows about it.

"Shows" partitions but the numbers are....uh, strange.

Another view - says "unsupported file system" (?).

Edited by piikea
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jaclaz

jaclaz

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Try diskman as per jaclaz's post #29.

NO.

That was a JFYI for dencorso. Diskman4 is well above the head of the average user. :ph34r:

jaclaz ALREADY posted (on post #14) that an app to try was SwissKnife, which is GUI and more friendly:

jaclaz

Edited by jaclaz
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piikea

piikea

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Tried SwissKnife & it didn't work - not sure why not. After attempting partitioning in FreeFDISK & then formatting something is still messed up. Now in SwissKnife it shows the drive as formatted but not partitioned & shows 439787MB as used space & 0MB free space (yet total space as 953859MB which is the only number that makes sense). Only option it gives me is "Format" - "Delete" partition is grayed out.

FreeFDISK shows 4 partitions but the numbers are strange AND the drive letter is incorrect (i.e., NOT the same as it is assigned in Windows).

Edited by piikea
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dencorso

dencorso

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Let's try something...

1) connect the USB HDD;

2) open a DOS Box and run RPM 2.40... the Hard Disk 3 should be the USB HDD...

3) confirm that the displayed partitions look like the screenshot you posted before.

4) if so, select the red lines, one by one, and press "Del". The strange partitions should be removed.

5) close RPM, dismiss the DOS Box and disconnect the USB HDD.

6) after 5 minutes, connect the USB HDD again

7) open a DOS Box and run RPM 2.40... the Hard Disk 3 should be the USB HDD...

8) does the disk still show no partitions, as when you finished 4? If so, great! But even if not,

9) take a screenshot of what RPM shows for the Hard Disk 3 and post it here, so I can guide you through the next step.

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dencorso

dencorso

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So far, so good... :)

Now:

1) connect the USB HDD;

2) open a DOS Box and run RPM 2.40... the Hard Disk 3 should be the USB HDD...

3) confirm that the displayed partitions look like the screenshot you posted before.

4) highlight the first unused partiton and press "Enter", then select "FAT-32", read the value in the "select size" box (you may have to use the cursor keys to do it, since it'll be too big for the field), divide it by 4 using the windows calculator and replace the value in the "select size" box by the result, then press "Enter", then "Save Now", then "Format Now", then "Quick Format without Surface Test".

5) post a screeshot.

6) close RPM, dismiss the DOS Box and disconnect the USB HDD.

7) after 5 minutes, connect the USB HDD again

8) open a DOS Box and run RPM 2.40... the Hard Disk 3 should be the USB HDD...

9) does the disk still show the partition you just created, as per the screenshot? If so, great, just tell me so. If not post another screenshot.

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