Max Hard Drive Size, Ontrack Dynamic Disk Overlay Problems??

Question

I purchased a 160 gb hard drive to use on my Pentium 3 Dimension 4100, and encountered max size problems. The Drive Manager installation software indicated max hard drive size for Win 98 is 137 GB and said the drive would be formatted as a 137 GB drive. I can live with that value, but after formatting was complete, the following message appeared: 'To achieve full capacity of your drive, Disk Manager installed your hard drive with Ontrack's Dynamic Drive Overlay.' I used a boot disk to start the computer, and the dir command indicated the hard drive size is about 131 MB. Are there problems using the Ontrack Dynamic Drive Overlay? For example is the system noticeably slower? Any idea what size I might have without the Dynamic Drive Overlay? I assume a normal boot disk format would give me a smaller size without the overlay. I searched further before posting this message, and found a Dell document saying the 4100 was tested to 80GB, so may have other problems. I'm currently using Win Me (but will switch to Win 98SE when reinstalling the operating system) Thanks, Jim

jankerson · Answer

The easy way around Win 9x is to use the software again and split the drive in Half, that way you will have full access to all the space.

Jim_Hill · Answer

Thanks for the suggestion, but the Deskstar Hard Drive Configuration CD assumes the hard drive is formatted (with overlay), and it is now time to install the operating system. There doesn't seem to be any way go back and reformat. I don't know if fdisk and format would solve the problem, or make things worse.

Jim

jankerson · Answer

Download this: Download Drive Fitness Test http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#Diskmanager     Restores drive fitness Note: these utilities will overwrite customer data and allow repair of bad sectors. Erase Bootsector utility (use DFT Utility option: Erase Boot Sector) Low-level format utility (use DFT Utility option: Erase Disk)   Then you can start over.

Storage, Drives & Media

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