Can only 4gb of 280gb drive

[Guest]

Help. I have reloaded this server 4 times and I am unable to see more than
4gb of the 280gb hard drive. I have checked and double checked the array
settings with the vendor. It is not a hardware issue. It is defianetly a
software issue, but I can not figure out how to correct it. I have loaded
all of the latest patches etc., still makes no difference. Disk Manager
shows a Simple Dynamic NTFS Healthy 4gb C partition on top and down below it
shows Disk 0 273.8gb NTFS Healty System. The Disk 0 was a Basic disk, I
converted to dynamic hoping to be able to access the rest of the drive space.
I have even upgraded from Win2k to Win2k3 to see if that made any
difference. I need some ideas.....

 

[Brian Cryer]

Help. I have reloaded this server 4 times and I am unable to see more
than
4gb of the 280gb hard drive. I have checked and double checked the array
settings with the vendor. It is not a hardware issue. It is defianetly a
software issue, but I can not figure out how to correct it. I have loaded
all of the latest patches etc., still makes no difference. Disk Manager
shows a Simple Dynamic NTFS Healthy 4gb C partition on top and down below
it
shows Disk 0 273.8gb NTFS Healty System. The Disk 0 was a Basic disk, I
converted to dynamic hoping to be able to access the rest of the drive
space.
I have even upgraded from Win2k to Win2k3 to see if that made any
difference. I need some ideas.....

If it can only see a 4gb partition - who created that partition and with
what software? Can you delete the partition so nothing is on it and then
create a new single partition? alternately if disk manager can show 273.8gb
of unused space then does it allow you to create a second partition in that
space?

or have I misunderstood?

 

[Guest]

We used HP SmartStart software. If I delete the partition in disk manage,
then I start all over again, to wind up with 4gb partition again. SmartStart
sees all of the 280gb, in fact when you goto load Win2k we select maxmimum
partition size of 280gb, but when it is all done, it shows 4gb, with a Disk 0
of 273gb, but you can not do anything with it. If there is a way to attach
files, I could show you what I am talking about. It does not allow me to
create a 2nd partition.

 

[Brian Cryer]

We used HP SmartStart software. If I delete the partition in disk manage,
then I start all over again, to wind up with 4gb partition again.
SmartStart
sees all of the 280gb, in fact when you goto load Win2k we select maxmimum
partition size of 280gb, but when it is all done, it shows 4gb, with a
Disk 0
of 273gb, but you can not do anything with it. If there is a way to
attach
files, I could show you what I am talking about. It does not allow me to
create a 2nd partition.

I have found an old posting (2003!!) which indicated that SmartStart had a
bug in it which prevented it from creating partitions greater than 4GB. I
would have thought that by now HP would have fixed it. I know nothing about
HP SmartStart, but its worth checking whether HP have released a later
version.

Another thought, is there a good reason why you are using HP SmartStart at
all? Have you tried loading windows using just the windows cd and letting
the normal windows install create the partition?

 

[Steve Williamson]

It's probably a SCSI disk therefore would need customized partitioning and
array creating software prior to window being installed.

 

[Cameron Dorrough]

It's probably a SCSI disk therefore would need customized partitioning and
array creating software prior to window being installed.

Even if so, you should still be able to load the SCSI Card drivers at the
start of W2k setup and use the normal windows install to create the
partition.

Our HP's allowed us to set the partitions from a BIOS boot loader program.

Cameron