Hard Drive showing incorrect capacity
 

Hello,

I have uninstalled the Centos from my 40G hard drive yesterday. While I am trying to format it and reinstall the linux today, I just found out that my hard drive is showing only 19G instead of 40G.

I tried fdisk, write zero and so on but still no luck.

Can anyone (please) advise me how to fix it to show the correct capacity 40G?

Thank you.

What exact commands did you use? Specifically, what about: Where x is the correct letter for your drive & "hd" might have to be "sd" -- you gave us so little background.

Thanks for the reponse.

I tried with A:\>format -1 /dev/hda, I got Parameter Format Not Correct- -1 error message.

When I tried with A:\>format /dev/hda, I got Invalid Swhitch- /dev

I also tried with sd instead of hd too.

Here is more info about my system's currant state:

PC: P4
HD: Western Digital 40G (but showing only 19G)
Story: I just uninstalled Centos. When I tried to fdisk and format the hard drive with win98 dos disk, it only shows 19G instead of 40G. I also tried with Western Digital write zero utility but it still showing 19G.

Please advise.

Thanks!

You were asked for the output of "fdisk -l" (lower case ell, not the number one). Why were you running a "format" command ???.
Leave the device off; just use (as root) "fdisk -l"

DOS command with *nix parameters
 

From your most recent post, it appears as if you are using DOS commands without using DOS parameters.

If you want to use the "FORMAT" command from DOS, you must use the correct parameters. To see what they are, from the DOS command line type, "format /?"

It could be you have a 19GB formatted partition on your hard drive and another unformatted (unseen) partition of 20+GB.

I am not familiar with centos, but you might want to check the centos site for information. I believe I read in one of the centos formats where one individual had a problem similar to yours. He had to delete the centos partition using "FDISK" from a Windows startup disk.

A good Linux-based partition editor is "gparted" which can be found at http://gparted.sourceforge.net.

Good luck.

Thanks for the response.

Sorry for my unclear explaination.

Linux has been removed from the hard drive. No more linux.

I only have a blank hard drive (with incorrect and hidden partitions)

Thats why I was trying with windows dos disk.

I did try with the linux fdisk commands becuase I thought it would delete the hidden/remaining linux partitions.

I also used the windows/dos correct parameters for fdisk and format as I mentioned earlier.

I am still trying.

Please advise.

Thanks.

oh in that case run the dos fdisk. delete all the partitions recreate with large drive support, set ur drive as active partition, reboot. then
to format
it will take about 30 minutes

Yes, I did the fdisk but there's no partition to be deleted. (I already done this earlier too)

So, I created a primary partition and set activate. It is still showing 19G.

Then I shutdown and restarted the computer. I am formating it now as you advised (A:\>Format C: /s). The capacity is still 19G only.

All I did was just uninstalled the CentOS from the hard drive. I think this is messed up linux. This is my first time trying linux.

Please advise.

Thanks.