1. Tell us something about the machine your friend is using - the make &
model. Presumably it's an OEM-branded machine, yes? Do you or he happen to
know the make/model of the motherboard?
E-machines, t2080, originally 80G drive.
2. Does the machine boot & operate properly when using whatever original HDD
(PATA? SATA?) was installed in that machine? Any problems at all with the
system notwithstanding the problem with the 300 GB HDD? How is that boot HDD
partitioned/formatted?
Original drive (ATA100) is dead (boot failure). Not sure yet if it
will spin up for non-boot access.
3. Is the only reason he purchased a 300 GB HDD (PATA? SATA?) was to obtain
additional disk capacity? No other reason?
to replace the dead drive.
4. Presumably the OS is XP. Contains SP1 and/or SP2?
Restore disk contains a (Norton) Ghost image with SP1 in the image.
5. Provide more details about how he used "his restore disk (Ghost) from the
manufacturer to rebuild his system". How was the 300 GB HDD
connected/configured in the system? Is he certain all the connections -
jumper settings were proper? What do you mean "Ghost"? Are you referring to
the disk cloning program from Symantec called Norton Ghost? Did he clone the
contents of the original HDD to the new 300 GB HDD using that program? Or
are you simply referring to the recovery or restore CD provided by the
manufacturer of his OEM machine? And if so, are you sure he used it
correctly?
It's a "boot and flush" restore disk from e-machines. Boot it, choose
the option (only option) to restore the system, OK the warnings about
erasing the hard drive, it's like starting from day one on that
system.
6. You mention a "32G partition". Could there be some FAT32 file system
issue involved here?
Initially, yes. He used a boot disk (win 98) to create a FAT32
partition that was 32G. The expectation was that the restore program
from e-machines would just wipe this anyway but it looks like it
placed the restored image in it, rather than replacing it.
I am planning him to try the restore with no partition there at all,
but I', making a wild guess that he gets (at best) the 80G partition
back that he had on the original drive.
And you mention "he's got 270G open space on the
drive." What is "open space"? Unallocated space that you see in Disk
Management (I assume that's what you mean by "Disk Administrator")?
Ordinarily, a 300 GB HDD will reflect about 279 GB binary in the system. So
where does that "32G partition" fit in here?
Anna
Total new drive space is 300G. As it stands now, he sees the 32G
partition in Disk Management but he does not see any of the remaining
space showing up as available (i.e. unpartitioned, unallocated, etc).
From Disk Management, it looks like he has a drive with a physical
size of 32G, all of which is occupied by the primary partition.