disappearing megabytes

[ayoub_ibrahim]

just got myself an ibm 15Gb Telesto ATA100 drive.Fdisked it making 2 partitions(65% for C & 35% for D). Value for c is 9523MB & d is 5122MB. Proceed to format; C formats with correct MB value but D only shows 1796MB to format. Rechecked partition sizes in fdisk & they remain as above ie 65/35 with corresponding 9523/5122.Any idea on what's going on here? System is P3 850@977, P3B-F M/B,G400 Max,256MB Crucial cas2 RAM,Promise Ultra ATA100 PCI card,SB live

[ayoub_ibrahim]

interesting suggestion! Bios is version 1006 which is less than 2 months old,so I'm fairly sure M/B bios is not the problem. I never considered the promise controller card bios though. I'll try formating again but this time using M/B ide controller instead of promise controller.

[Gurm]

There are several updates to the promise BIOS. I suggest giving that a shot.

In addition, why are you partitioning? I have yet, in this day and age, to hear a GOOD reason to partition a hard drive (as opposed to just using a defragmenter regularly).

If you're doing it to put swap on drive D, you've shot yourself in the foot, because the heads have to seek all the way to the end of the drive anyway.

If you're doing it to give yourself clean space to burn CD's from or something like that, you're again shooting yourself in the foot, because the instant a system access happens (several times a minute at least) the heads will seek to the other end of the drive.

So why partition? Just curious.

- Gurm

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[xortam]

There are a number of reasons why partitioning (actually multiple volumes) might make sense: 1) Eases backup specifications by separating OS from apps and data, 2) allows installation of differing file systems including FS's shared between OS's (e.g. FAT16 in DOS, Win98, and NT4, etc.) and 3) reduced file access times (yes, I know these are improved in NTFS4/5, HPFS, etc. FS's), 4) support of various namespaces, 5) size limitation of installed FS, and 6) allows different FS parameters (sector size, number of directory entries, namespace, etc.) to be used to optimize the volume for its application.

[Gurm]

Ok those are valid reasons, except for the "reduced file access times", since the access times are actually increased by the amount of time it takes to seek the head to that partition in the first place.

But unless you're multibooting or insist on running FAT16 (and this fella is obviously running FAT32, otherwise he wouldn't have a base partition size of 8GB) or some VERY SPECIAL reason (which most of yours are), my question stands.

- Gurm

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[xortam]

Gurm, I was responding to your broad statement in an even more broader (not standard Windows FS's) context. Just reacting to someone making a sweeping generalization. We can concentrate on simply FAT32. I believe even still with FAT32, the Directory Entry Tables are located at the beginning of the volume while NTFS, et.al., place the DETs in the middle of the volume, thus reducing seek times w/i the volume. The smaller the volume, the less seek movement between reading the DET entry and the file contents. To evaluate disk performance, we would have to look at the system usage (multi-tasking), small versus large file I/O, cross-volume access, etc.
... but ayoub_ibrahim probably would rather that we concentrate on the problem at hand. How did the BIOS update test do? I agree with Gurm in that is probably where your problem lies. I assume you're using Win98 (or 95, SE, or ME) and installing FAT32. Is this the only OS installed? Please confirm. Be careful when using the terms partition or logical volume. The primary partition contains one volume while the extended partition contains multiple logical volumes (having only two volumes makes this straight-forward).

[This message has been edited by xortam (edited 06 August 2000).]

[ayoub_ibrahim]

thanks for your input guys. I've actually sorted things out now. Seems that I'm getting dumber with age. Problem lay in my misunderstanding extended partition as instead of putting 100% to make D,I stupidly put 35% ie 35% of 5122MB= 1796 MB.I use the D partition for games & use C for data and necessary applications.

[xortam]

Glad you got it resolved. I've "learned" things over again many times and have forgotten more than I ever learned. Computers are very "honest" which is reassuring, yet frustrating.