32 Gb Limit on 40Gb disk

Hi I have a friends HD which may be damaged, but I am using Win 2K server on an old machine to play with it. But it is refusing to see it, I think it's because it's over 32Gb. If I set the jumpers to limit it to a 32Gb drive will this have any effect upon the data on the drive? Only a small % of the drive has data on it.

Any help much appreciated.

 

Win2k doesnt have a limitation seeing drives over 32gb. It has problems formatting drives as fat32 over 32gb. The bios might, however.

It might not be seeing it cause the drive is toast.

 

Yes, try getting and installing an updated BIOS.
. If that doesn't work, you can get a PCI adapter card (I recommend SiliconImage based cards e.g. the Syba) for under $25 shipped that can handle any size drive thru its own BIOS.

A third option (but not a good one) is to use a software overlay (usually available from the drive manufacturer's web site - often comes with retail boxed drives on a CD or diskette, but you want to download anyway as it may not be the latest version on the disk that you have).

.bh.

 

The BIOS correctly identifies this drive.

Before I took it out of the other PC, it would boot to DOS where DIR worked sometimes, but not once I'd changed to the WINDOWS directory. My assumption was that there was some physical damage. But I could still see a list of jpg's in 'My Pictures', and I am trying to save these.
It was running Win ME!

 

A BIOS can recognize the name, etc. of a drive and still not be able to set it up for over 32MB of available space (a hardwired limit of Cylinder/Heads/Sectors) - often you can tell by the date of your current BIOS revision. Get the latest BIOS and try it. If that doesn't work, my other options can deal with it.

.bh.

ps. Also some drives have a jumper that can artificially limit the drive space to 32 or even 16GB.

.bh.

 

Thanks
I can set the jumpers to 32Gb but I was not sure if that would cause issues with the FAT, (it's a Samsung SV4084H - which on the Samsung site is under the heading Legacy Drives!), and would I then be able to access the data on the drive?

 

Here is a link to exhaustive info on drive size limitations:
http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/drive_size_barrier_limitations_2.htm

.bh.

 

Thanks

 

It is a FAT-32 file system limitation. Drive was never properly partitioned to use the full amount of space. Often if you don't create partitions to take up the rest of the space on a drive, the open space past the end of the primary partition can cause problems - IOW, if Windwoes has a brain-fart, it can write data out in the unknown territory past the end of the partition...
. Moral of the tale: Don't leave unpartitioned space on a drive!

.bh.

 

From that link you gave me...
You cannot format a volume larger than 32 GB in size using the FAT32 file system in Windows 2000. The Windows 2000 FastFAT driver can mount and support volumes larger than 32 GB that use the FAT32 file system (subject to the other limits), but you cannot create one using the Format tool. This behavior is by design. If you need to create a volume larger than 32 GB, use the NTFS file system instead.

I don't think any of the space was un partitioned, so Win2K should be able to see it. Maybe it's all down to physical damage on the disk.

I haven't tried setting the jumpers yet, I put another disk in and it's still running a scan disk!

I'll try later, thanks for your help.