i recently aqquired a 19 gig HD from a friend, in BIOS it says 19075 mb (19 gig) although when i try and format it, i get a message saying 2001 mb free making it a 2gig, how can i free up my extra 17 gig? Please tell me because i really need the space

run fdisk on it and have a look ,your friend might of had it partitioned

im pretty sure thats it, but how do i get it to one whole one or the 17 gig partition?

boot comp using bootdisk get one here www.bootdisk.com if need one
once loaded up type fdisk
then choose option 4 display partition infomation see if its partitioned
then choose option 3 delete partition or logical dos drive
once you have deleted all partitions
restart comp again with bootdisk run fdisk then say yes to enable large disk
choose 1 create dos partition this will take you to another choice
choose 1 create primary dos partition and choose to use all your space
restart comp again with bootdisk then type format c: or whatever your drive letter is

the above info is based on only having 1 physical hdd installed if you have this drive installed as slave you will have an extra choice in fdisk number 5
so be careful of which drive your working on

HTH