[NCLUG] HDD formatting problems...

[dobbster]

Hi,

This one is probably trivial (I always feel a sense of awe when I post
to this list).

First of all, I recently acquired a Gateway PIII-450 system from a
friend (it was VERY cheap).  It came with an 6 GB disk.  I repartitioned
it and installed Mandrake 7.1 with pretty generic options.  The system
works fine in both Windows 98 and Linux, but I don't have much free
space.

Next, I purchased a 20 GB Western Digital IDE Drive.  The BIOS shows the
disk fine (as 20 GB), and the "EZ-Install" tool that came with the disk
has no problems formatting multiple big FAT32 partitions.  Thus it works
great in Windows.

However, I can't seem to make an ext2 partition work.  If I erase the
FAT32 partitions and use fdisk, the new partitions show up as absurdly
small (like 10 MB).  I tried the "diskdrake" program and it shows the
disk as 8 GB.

If I leave the FAT32 partitions there and run fdisk I get "Unable to
read /dev/hdd".

I'd really like to make two partitions, one FAT32 and one ext2, each 10
GB.

My kernel is 2.2.15-4mdk...  dmesg shows 
hdd: WDC WD205BA, ATA DISK drive 
hdd: WDC WD205BA, 8063MB w/2048kB Cache, CHS=16383/16/63.

What gives?  I must be missing something obvious (or did I forget to
read something somewhere?)

See y'all at the install fest!

Thanks,

Mark (dobbster at frii.com)