Why won PartitionMagic make a partition larger than 2.1 GB?
Reader: I installed a 20GB hard drive in a system. I partitioned the drive with DOS 6.22’s FDISK program and although FDISK sees the entire drive, the largest active partition that FDISK can make is about 2GB. And, after I formatted the partition, FDISK reports the total drive size as 8GB. What happened to the missing 12GB? Do I have a BIOS limitation or what? Computer Doctor: Since FDISK originally saw the entire capacity of the drive, the BIOS isn’t the issue. You’ve run into two limitations that DOS 6.22 imposes on hard drive sizes. The first limitation is that DOS 6.22 cannot recognize a drive larger than 8.4GB (even if your BIOS can); the second limitation is that a single partition can’t be larger than 2.1GB. These limitations are also shared by the original Windows 95 and the 95a release. You need Win95B or newer (Win98, Me, NT4, 2000) to support your entire drive properly.
