Just a double-check - you computer-savvy people!

[ellenmillion]

I used the default 'maximum partition' when I went through that song and dance, and apparently, it chose a single partition (only one additional drive shows up in my tree). I was warned, in geek-speak that I barely understood, that I was going to have to partition this in halves because I have Win 98 SE??? Is this true? Do I need to re-partition?? I'd like to know now before I start storing stuff on this drive. Any advice is welcome!

~Ellen

Edit: helps if I mention that its an 80 gig drive, probably...

Comments

[renatus.livejournal.com]

That is NOT necessarily true.

So, you formatted it with Windows 98 - does the drive show all 80 GB (or close to it, it will probably show as 70 some odd), or does it show as less than that? If it shows as under 70 with nothing on it, then I'll know what direction we'll need to go.

There was a time where the partitioning program for windows could only handle up to 32 GB - but that was Windows 98 first Edition. SE can handle more, although I can't quite remember how much. However, depending on what updates you have installed and etc, you may have the updated fdisk (partitioning program) that Microsoft released, which can handle up to 120GB. If you have the older fdisk program, it wouldn't have mattered if you had made two partitions - it was an inability of the program to recognize that much space, and it could only split into parts what it could see. The new one, however, is easy to acquire should you need it.

Tell me what you have and I'll be able to answer more clearly and help you get to where you need to go - I've done this sort of thing for three years so I feel perfectly comfortable giving advice through text. ^_^

[ellenmillion.livejournal.com]

I'm seeing 76.3 Gig capacity through explorer, and I test-saved some files onto it and it *seems* to be working just fine. Thank you soooooo much for bending brain power to this!! The computer company sounded hassled when I last called for advice. :P

[renatus.livejournal.com]

Then everything got partitioned and formatted correctly :) For some reason drives are advertised as if 1 GB = 1000 MB, when in reality 1 GB = 1024 MB, so the actual count of GB is lower. Same amount of room in the end, though. You shouldn't have anything to worry about.

[ellenmillion.livejournal.com]

Yay! Yay!! Yay!!! Thank you! I feel much more at ease now. :)

[jemstone.livejournal.com]

This is one of the things I hated about Windows, and love about *nix OS's and Mac OS (Classic and new), and that is the ability or inability to see an entire drive. Windows = Jump through hoops. Non-Windows = Oh, look, a drive. I think I'll format the whole thing, okay? Zip! Done!

I am very glad you got it done painlessly. I have very bad memories of setting up user computers at the ISP I worked at. Bad ones. With the words "FAT32" written on them. Gah.

-JEM