Where has drive d gone? Advise?

Hello. I've just reinstalled 98 on an old Toshiba laptop. Even
before the last installation was gone there'd been a drive D, the hard
drive in some way partitioned, something I don't completely understand
on that particular machine. This is a 4 gig machine, but C is 2047
mbytes. Where has the rest gone and how do I get it back, better
still, could I incorporate it into C or at least access it from
Windows again? I've used fdisk from my boot floppy and see that C
seems to be partitioned into 1 and 2, 1 has a status of A, Pri Dos, 2
is Ext Dos (1862 mbytes).

Having just been through the reinstallation palaver, can I sort this
out, entirely or in part, without wiping the hard drive? (Don't say
no...)

There are 4 options under Fdisk options - do options 1 or 3 come into
this (create dos partition or ligical dos drive & delete partition or
logical dos drive)

I'd hoped when I wiped C and reinstalled that the full 4 gig would be
visible.

At the moment D seems to be the ramdrive my boot disk creates, but I'm
sure this was once half the hard drive, although D also seems to be a
'logical dos drive'.

E is the CD drive, A the floppy. (I don't know quite enough about
this to know if you need telling this.)

If someone could describe what I need to do in steps, preferably
without downloading anything else, that'd be great. Thanks in
advance.

p.s. Could I split D then and put a small version of Linux on it?

"poachedeggs" wrote in message
...
Hello. I've just reinstalled 98 on an old Toshiba laptop. Even
before the last installation was gone there'd been a drive D, the hard
drive in some way partitioned, something I don't completely understand
on that particular machine. This is a 4 gig machine, but C is 2047
mbytes. Where has the rest gone and how do I get it back, better
still, could I incorporate it into C or at least access it from
Windows again? I've used fdisk from my boot floppy and see that C
seems to be partitioned into 1 and 2, 1 has a status of A, Pri Dos, 2
is Ext Dos (1862 mbytes).

Having just been through the reinstallation palaver, can I sort this
out, entirely or in part, without wiping the hard drive? (Don't say
no...)

There are 4 options under Fdisk options - do options 1 or 3 come into
this (create dos partition or ligical dos drive & delete partition or
logical dos drive)

I'd hoped when I wiped C and reinstalled that the full 4 gig would be
visible.

At the moment D seems to be the ramdrive my boot disk creates, but I'm
sure this was once half the hard drive, although D also seems to be a
'logical dos drive'.

E is the CD drive, A the floppy. (I don't know quite enough about
this to know if you need telling this.)

If someone could describe what I need to do in steps, preferably
without downloading anything else, that'd be great. Thanks in
advance.

p.s. Could I split D then and put a small version of Linux on it?


Win98 can be installed on either a Fat16 or a Fat32 partition.

Your drive was probably setup as fat16...which can only support 2 gig
partitions

So, you can run fdisk and create a logical drive on your extended dos
partition,
then reboot and format it. Windows should them be able to use it.

If you want to install Linux
you can let Linux handle the 2 gigs that's now free.


Finally. If you want do have Win98 installed all on one 4 gig partition

you'd have to re-run fdisk and delete everything that's there

When you first use fdisk it will ask you if you want to enable large disk
access,
if you say "yes" then it will set the drive up as Fat32 and you can have all
of the 4 gigs as one partition

"poachedeggs" wrote in message
...
| Hello. I've just reinstalled 98 on an old Toshiba laptop. Even
| before the last installation was gone there'd been a drive D, the hard
| drive in some way partitioned, something I don't completely understand
| on that particular machine. This is a 4 gig machine, but C is 2047
| mbytes. Where has the rest gone and how do I get it back, better
| still, could I incorporate it into C or at least access it from
| Windows again? I've used fdisk from my boot floppy and see that C
| seems to be partitioned into 1 and 2, 1 has a status of A, Pri Dos, 2
| is Ext Dos (1862 mbytes).
|
| Having just been through the reinstallation palaver, can I sort this
| out, entirely or in part, without wiping the hard drive? (Don't say
| no...)
|
| There are 4 options under Fdisk options - do options 1 or 3 come into
| this (create dos partition or ligical dos drive & delete partition or
| logical dos drive)
|
| I'd hoped when I wiped C and reinstalled that the full 4 gig would be
| visible.
|
| At the moment D seems to be the ramdrive my boot disk creates, but I'm
| sure this was once half the hard drive, although D also seems to be a
| 'logical dos drive'.
|
| E is the CD drive, A the floppy. (I don't know quite enough about
| this to know if you need telling this.)
|
| If someone could describe what I need to do in steps, preferably
| without downloading anything else, that'd be great. Thanks in
| advance.
|
| p.s. Could I split D then and put a small version of Linux on it?

I would have recommended re-sizing the partition with some tool like BING,
however, now you mention Linux installation which needs its own partition.

Best leave what you have presently. After you play around with Linux for
awhile, it will likely become your main OS [at least its supported AND is
constantly being updated; and has lots of nice applications, generally for
free. Use Linux's installer to work on the partitions while installing.

--
MEB
http://peoplescounsel.org
a Peoples' counsel

Windows diagnostics/Security/Networking:
http://peoplescounsel.org/ref/windows-main.htm
_ _
~~

Hello. I've just reinstalled 98 on an old Toshiba laptop. Even
before the last installation was gone there'd been a drive D, the hard
drive in some way partitioned, something I don't completely understand

(some computers comes with weird setup-partitions so it is
possible to restore the windows installation without a cd,
perhaps you got one of those... if so and you have a win98
cd I would to remove that partition to save space.....
maybe burn it to a dvd first if you need it later possibly)

on that particular machine. This is a 4 gig machine, but C is 2047

ah... ok the size of 2GB sounds like it is formatted in FAT16
instead of FAT32?

mbytes. Where has the rest gone and how do I get it back, better
still, could I incorporate it into C or at least access it from
Windows again? I've used fdisk from my boot floppy and see that C
seems to be partitioned into 1 and 2, 1 has a status of A, Pri Dos, 2
is Ext Dos (1862 mbytes).

ohh.. I perhaps missunderstood you there...
you have a primary partition with win98 on it, and a extended
partition without any subpartitions in it?
("extended" as the kind that is a container for subpartitions)

did you used to have a partition D: in it previously
and it have disappeared?

Having just been through the reinstallation palaver, can I sort this
out, entirely or in part, without wiping the hard drive?

yes I would recomend useing GParted livecd http://gparted.sourceforge.net/
boot from it and resize your partition in that program
(should be no problem, but remember to backup your most important files
first anyway...)


There are 4 options under Fdisk options - do options 1 or 3 come into
this (create dos partition or ligical dos drive & delete partition or
logical dos drive)

fdisk is kind of limited... I guess someone should code a new fdisk
that can do what modern partitioning tools can, but still look&feel
like fdisk.... hmm.... not that its userinterface is good but so we
can delete the old one and anyway have "fdisk" just in case...

for now.. use gparted or other new ones instead

I'd hoped when I wiped C and reinstalled that the full 4 gig would be
visible.

if you really had to to it with fdisk, you had to delete both the
primare partition (loosing all your files) and the extended
partition (and any eventual partitions in it), then create a new
fat32 partition using 100% of the space, reboot, then format
c: and then reinstall windows etc... no need for all that work...
(only do that if you wanted to do a clean fresh start anyway...
but in that case I would brake the piggy bank and buy a new
bigger harddisk to "start clean" on and save the old one "as a
backup". the smallest/cheapest possible 2.5" disk today is
40 gig or so.. but cost allmost the same as a 120 gig disk hehe)

If someone could describe what I need to do in steps, preferably
without downloading anything else, that'd be great. Thanks in
advance.

well gparted livecd is about 90MB so if you are using
and old 56kbit modem that would take a while.. 4-5 hours...
(****! how did we survived back then??)

p.s. Could I split D then and put a small version of Linux on it?

oh.. yes if you want to install a linux on the d:-partition instead
then you should not merge the lost space to c: of course.
just boot the linux cd and it will probably help you... now 1862 is
kind of small even for linux (if you want a modern graphical one)
but there is small linux dists.. puppy linux perhaps?

but you have to download that then :-)

"poachedeggs" wrote in message
...

Hello. I've just reinstalled 98 on an old Toshiba laptop. Even
before the last installation was gone there'd been a drive D, the hard
drive in some way partitioned, something I don't completely understand
on that particular machine. This is a 4 gig machine, but C is 2047
mbytes. Where has the rest gone and how do I get it back, better
still, could I incorporate it into C or at least access it from
Windows again? I've used fdisk from my boot floppy and see that C
seems to be partitioned into 1 and 2, 1 has a status of A, Pri Dos, 2
is Ext Dos (1862 mbytes).

Having just been through the reinstallation palaver, can I sort this
out, entirely or in part, without wiping the hard drive?

If DOS sees the drive D: but Windows does not, this
suggests the drive has been partitioned (created by FDISK)
but not formatted. So simply boot from your floppy and
A FORMAT D:
and this will make drive D accessible in Win98.

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

"poachedeggs" wrote:

Hello. I've just reinstalled 98 on an old Toshiba laptop. Even
before the last installation was gone there'd been a drive D, the hard
drive in some way partitioned, something I don't completely understand
on that particular machine. This is a 4 gig machine, but C is 2047
mbytes. Where has the rest gone and how do I get it back, better
still, could I incorporate it into C or at least access it from
Windows again? I've used fdisk from my boot floppy and see that C
seems to be partitioned into 1 and 2, 1 has a status of A, Pri Dos, 2
is Ext Dos (1862 mbytes).

Having just been through the reinstallation palaver, can I sort this
out, entirely or in part, without wiping the hard drive? (Don't say
no...)

There are 4 options under Fdisk options - do options 1 or 3 come into
this (create dos partition or ligical dos drive & delete partition or
logical dos drive)

I'd hoped when I wiped C and reinstalled that the full 4 gig would be
visible.

At the moment D seems to be the ramdrive my boot disk creates, but I'm
sure this was once half the hard drive, although D also seems to be a
'logical dos drive'.

E is the CD drive, A the floppy. (I don't know quite enough about
this to know if you need telling this.)

If someone could describe what I need to do in steps, preferably
without downloading anything else, that'd be great. Thanks in
advance.

p.s. Could I split D then and put a small version of Linux on it?


D= CD Rom, you has to reformat C diive with A drive using Startup disk, after
that find fdisk file and choose 1 to format, all done D diive will appear,
and can using d drive to install win98, if don't has startup disk you can
copy from http://www.dewassoc.com/support/win98/win98startup.htm

"jamesron" wrote in message
...

At the moment D seems to be the ramdrive my boot disk creates, but I'm
sure this was once half the hard drive, although D also seems to be a
'logical dos drive'.
E is the CD drive, A the floppy.

You can find out for yourself whether D: is a RAMdrive or
a partition on your hard drive by any of several DOS commands.
1. If you can log to D:
(by keying D and colon and Enter)
you can then do
DIR
for a disk DIRectory and read its contents. (Some floppy
boot disks create a RAMdrive as rapid store for utilities.)
2. If you cannot log to D: it is probably an unformatted
partition, thus can be used only after you key
FORMAT D:
after which you can then run DIR or CHKDSK to verify its size etc.

D= CD Rom, you has to reformat C diive with A drive using Startup disk,
after
that find fdisk file and choose 1 to format, all done D diive will
appear,
and can using d drive to install win98, if don't has startup disk you can
copy from http://www.dewassoc.com/support/win98/win98startup.htm

BEWARE -- this web site offers only generic advice for desktops.
Some laptops especially Toshiba require laptop-specific drivers.
Never format or wipe your C: drive until you have both:
1. Collected and saved elsewhere all drivers (e.g. CD drivers)
required to boot off drive A and instal the CD drive (so as to
run the OS instal SETUP.EXE, and
2. Tested this beforehand, i.e. booted from a floppy and
confirmed you have access to all three drives (A:, HDD and CD)
before you start erasing material.

In your place I would first look on the Toshiba web site for
reinstallation procedures for this laptop.
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)