Formatting new 250 Gb SATA drive with Fdisk shows disk size as 23396 Mb! only 10 % of drive. Any help?

You would only use FDISK if you're going to format the drive as FAT-32.
That has never been a problem for me, because I use nothing But FAT-32 for all my drives, except Vista.

I just set the first partition (C: ) using FDISK, to about 30 gigs and format it in DOS.
Then I let FDISK set the remaining space as D:
(don't get hung up on the numbers)
No, it doesn't have enough digits to properly express the space on a large drive, but don't get hung up on that.  Just tell it to set the remaining space as the second partition.  Then run the DOS format on that partition.
Format won't properly express the size either when it starts.  Ignore that.
Just let it finish formatting the partition.  It will just keep formatting right out to the end of the drive.
I've done this many times, and the last time was on my 200gig SATA2, Maxtor drive.  It doesn't seem like it should work, but it does.
Use the FDISK and Format from Windows ME for the best results.
If you need a Windows ME boot disk and can't get one, drop me a PM.
I know where you can get one.

Good Luck,
Shadow 

There is a Gentleman who re-wrote the FDISK for '98 to fully display the size of LARGE drives.  He said he was going to do the same for ME, but he got busy elsewhere and now says he doesn't have the time to do it.

I think his post about it was on the MSFN forum.

If you use the method I outlined in an earlier post, you can virtually partition any size drive.  So far, a 200 gig drive is the largest I've partitioned with ME's FDISK, so I have no experience with a 500 gig drive, for instance.

But it sure can't hurt to try......

Cheers!
The Shadow