Partition An Old Hd

hey, I am fixing my aunts comp that my brother blew when he was using it.
Dad made the mistake of sending it to some place that supposedly knows about computers, when they didn't fix it at all, and even told us they couldn't get it to boot. Well I took it home, and after calling them about the HD they tried to keep on me, and the literally broken floppy drive, I stripped it and reassembled it witha few modifications and it works fine
However the coputer place completely formatted the HD, and it is only a 853.6mb HD. When I try to install any OS, I get a message saying there is no hard dsik available and it can't install because there is no valid fat or fat32 partition
I tried putting it in as a slave into my good comp, and adding a partition w/ partition magic pro, but found I can only add a partition that would be just for data, it won't let me add a partition to install an OS onto.
Any suggestions?
I want to put on 98, which i have the cd, and boot disk for
I also have windows 3.1, 95, 98, 98se, NT, me, XP home, XP pro, and linux redhat
but I think 98 would probably be best for her
anyway, does anyone know how i can make a partition to put an os onto this old HD?
thanks

Use fdisk from the prompt and create an active primary partition.

And use 98se.

tried that but when i type fdisk or fdisk.exe it just says "no fixed disk present" :blink:

Is the drive being detected in the BIOS?

u could try putting the hard drive in a nother pc (urs) and format it then make some partitions. then install windows on it should do the trick i think :rolleyes:

Quote:

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Originally posted by gungrave@16 March 2004 - 11:32
u could try putting the hard drive in a nother pc (urs) and format it then make some partitions. then install windows on it should do the trick i think :rolleyes:

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that's what i tried, but when I try to create a primary partition on it, it wont let me, because it says you can not have 2 primary partitions on one system, because of the primary partition on my other hd i guess

Quote:

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Originally posted by kaiweiler+16 March 2004 - 15:38--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (kaiweiler @ 16 March 2004 - 15:38)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-gungrave@16 March 2004 - 11:32
u could try putting the hard drive in a nother pc (urs) and format it then make some partitions. then install windows on it should do the trick i think&nbsp; :rolleyes:

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that&#39;s what i tried, but when I try to create a primary partition on it, it wont let me, because it says you can not have 2 primary partitions on one system, because of the primary partition on my other hd i guess [/b][/quote]
:huh: i got 2 on one hard drive and 4 on the other thats srage.

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Originally posted by Virtualbody1234@16 March 2004 - 11:14
Is the drive being detected in the BIOS?

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nope, just checked :blink:
but i tried using two different HD&#39;s (both exact same brand/size/etc) and neither worked, maybe it&#39;s the molex connector, I&#39;ll try switching that

Quote:

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Originally posted by gungrave+16 March 2004 - 11:40--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (gungrave @ 16 March 2004 - 11:40)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>

Quote:

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Originally posted by kaiweiler@16 March 2004 - 15:38
<!--QuoteBegin-gungrave

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Quote:

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@16 March 2004 - 11:32
u could try putting the hard drive in a nother pc (urs) and format it then make some partitions. then install windows on it should do the trick i think&nbsp; :rolleyes:

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that&#39;s what i tried, but when I try to create a primary partition on it, it wont let me, because it says you can not have 2 primary partitions on one system, because of the primary partition on my other hd i guess

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:huh: i got 2 on one hard drive and 4 on the other thats srage. [/b][/quote]
2 primary?? and 4 on the other?&#33;?
primary or logical partitions?

Maybe you have to manually setup the drive in the BIOS. You know # of cyls, heads etc. The settings should be printed on the drive or available at the makers website.

What make and model drive is it?

You can have up to 4 primary partitions on a drive.

But Dos-based windows systems (95,98, ME) will only recognise the first primary partition and an extended dos partition.

This is one of the reasons why it is NOT a good idea to use startup disks from Dos-based systems when you have Win2k or XP installed.

both are Western Digital Caviar 2850 :lol: :lol: :lol:
853.6mb :01:

im off home now from school ill take a screen shot of my hard drive partitions and show u.
in a bit guys. :)

WD2850

CYL=1654, HEAD=16, SEC=63

That&#39;s what I put in, but then theres also
Pre
Lnd
XL
I have Pre and Lnd set on 0 and XL on "M" and it&#39;s not working
Pre and can be any number between -1 and 1023, and Lnd can be between 0 and over 35000 lol
XL can be either M or Y

Quote:

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Originally posted by kaiweiler@16 March 2004 - 10:12
That&#39;s what I put in, but then theres also
Pre
Lnd
XL
I have Pre and Lnd set on 0 and XL on "M" and it&#39;s not working
Pre and can be any number between -1 and 1023, and Lnd can be between 0 and over 35000 lol
XL can be either M or Y

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Check the cables. Power and IDE. Is the drives pin 1 connected to pin 1 on the motherboard?

Can you hear if the drive spins?

yes the pins are connected in the right spots, and the drive is spinning :rolleyes:

Write PREcompensation doesn&#39;t matter on IDE drives, set it to -1 (= OFF).
Again, LaNDing zone is not important with modern drives, set it to 1655, it will be ignored anyway.

Not sure what XL is referring to. Try both settings. It may mean Logical Block Addressing, in which case Y is the setting you want.

Edit: if the board has autodetect, use that.

You could try something like killdisk to "erase" the drive before partitioning and formatting.

http://www.killdisk.com/

Just a thought. If it is the only drive on that cable it should NOT be set as master.

WDC drives have a different settings for master and single.

Drives with 6 or 10 pin jumpers:
For master the jumper should be on pins 5&6, for single the jumper should be removed, although you can put it on pins 4&6 or 3&5 for safe keeping.

Drives with 9 pin jumpers:
For master the jumpers should be on pins 7&8 and 5&6, for single the jumpers should be on pins 7&8 and 1&2.

Edit: Jumpers

Quote:

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Originally posted by lynx@16 March 2004 - 12:38
Just a thought. If it is the only drive on that cable it should NOT be set as master.

WDC drives have a different settings for master and single.

Drives with 6 or 10 pin jumpers:
For master the jumper should be on pins 5&6, for single the jumper should be removed, although you can put it on pins 4&6 or 3&5 for safe keeping.

Drives with 9 pin jumpers:
For master the jumpers should be on pins 7&8 and 5&6, for single the jumpers should be on pins 7&8 and 1&2.

Edit: Jumpers

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your the man lynx :01:
it had a jumper on it when I got hold of it, which means the computer shop put one on, because the jumper is a lot newer looking then the drive, those bastards don&#39;t know shit lol, well not enough to run a business.
alright, I got past the hardware test on startup lol
now it is saying "Remove disks or other media, Press any key to restart"
I have nothing in the cd-rom, and no floppy in....
:huh:

Good point lynx, I had forgotten about the &#39;single&#39; settings.

It&#39;s now time to put a startup diskette in and run fdisk.

that&#39;s what i&#39;m gonna do, i switched the HD for the other HD (exact same size model and everything) and didn&#39;t get that message, instead i got the message "press spacebar to boot from diskette" which was exactly what i was hoping for&#33; :)
thanks folks, i&#39;ll see how this goes&#33;

Okay, I deleted all existing partitions and then made one primary partition using fdisk, now when I go to boot my 98se bootdisk after the system checks and stuff, i get a message saying:
"Windows Setup Requires 7340032 Bytes Available"
that is only around 7mb, and the hd is 853.6, what is the matter here?
the harddrive is recognized to it&#39;s full size in the bios, so it&#39;s not that

wipe it: killdisk


wow, first u should see whats on the disk lol there mite be some cred. card #s :shifty: :lol: :blink: :lol:

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Originally posted by atiVidia@16 March 2004 - 16:47
wipe it: killdisk


wow, first u should see whats on the disk lol there mite be some cred. card #s :shifty: :lol: :blink: :lol:

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lol it&#39;s my aunts&#33; i don&#39;t usually steal from family members....
but yeah, i&#39;ll try kill disk