Stressed out...can't get system to recognize new 40GB audio drive.

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PapillonIrl

PapillonIrl

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Old System:

PentIII intel 810e
10GB System drive(5400RPM)
20GB audio drive(5400RPM)
256MB RAM
Win98SE(need it for MME/Delta/24-bit reasons)

My 20GB audio drive went kaput. I had it backed up, and I needed to get back in action quickly, as I am tracking a demo EP for a young band who have the EP launch gig booked already.

New System:

PentIII intel 810e
10GB System drive(5400RPM)
40GB audio drive(7200RPM)
512MBRAM
Win98SE

The problem is that the system is only allowing me to format the disk as 8GB. This is no good, as my backed up projects amount to about 12GB. The place i bought it from reckon I need a BIOS upgrade. I'm not convinced, I think she was trying to get rid of me 'cos she wanted to go for lunch. What to you guys think ?

BIOS ID String:07/06/2000-i810-47B27X-6A69MG0AC-00

The BIOS is by Award Software I think. Very unhelpful website, the wholesalers who sold the PC in bulks' site is even worse.

I'd really appreciate any ideas you have, guys and gals.

pAp
 
SO you are trying to format the new disk? Have you fdisked it and may sure the partition table takes up the whole disk? I don't know if you can do taht in windows, I am a dos fan for that kind of stuff. Anyway, I would check that. What brand is the disk?
MIKE
 
I've run FDISK and that seems to be just giving me the option of an 8GB partition. The disk is a Seagate.

Thanks, for the reply. Do you think the BIOS is needs updating ?
 
The therory about a BIOS problem is not crazy, 8 gig is one of the limits of an older BIOS. However, since you only replaced your hard drive not your motherboard, and your old 20 gig was presumably recognised to its full size, that is not your problem.

Here's what you need to check -

1. Make sure your new drive has no partition info on it. You can do this by running the FDISK program from the DOS window. You will need to hit option 5 to swicth to your second drive. MAKE SURE YOU ARE LOOKING AT THE RIGHT DRIVE BEFORE YOU PROCEED OR YOU CAN ERRASE YOUR SYSTEM DRIVE. Once you are looking at your new drive (and I assume you have no data on it yet) select option 3 to delete any partion on it. Check option 4 to double check the drive is completely blank. Then reboot the system.

2. While rebooting hit the Delete key to go into the BIOS setup. Look for the section called IDE Autodect (or something close to that). Select it. It should see your main drive first, then your new drive.
Now the important part - First, make sure the detect does in fact see a capacity of 40 gigs (or very close to it). Then check to make sure you have LBA turned ON. On most Award Bios I have seen this is the second of three choices, and it will usually default to it.

3. Then reboot your system again. Go back and run FDISK. Again make sure you are looking at the right drive. Select the option to create a partion, and select the default to partition it to full size and make it active.

4. Reboot your system one last time. If all went well, you will now have a drive letter for your new drive in My Computer, but it's not formated yet so its not readable. Select it, right click, select format. After it finishes check the size, you should be ok.

Let me know if this works....
 
Will do, cheers RWhite.

Printing this out now and bringing it to my machine. I currently have no internet connection in my studio/home. I will get back to you and tell you what happened tommorow though.

Much appreciated,

Nathan.
 
I'm not sure about Seagate, but Western Digital has a utility that "patches" the bios to recognize large drives. Check the Seagate website for something similar... or maybe even try the Western Digital bios patch.
 
I agree with RWhite. Don't put that crap on your hard drive unless you have no other choice. I would upgrade my BIOS before I would install disk wizard or EZ bios etc.

But as he said, If your old drive was larger than 8 gig, the bios shouldn't be the problem. Unless your old drive had an "overlay" like EZ bios etc.

Twist
 
Thanks all !

Good links, good advice.

When I went home and chipped away with FDISK again, I was still having the same problem. I could only create a partition of 7985MB or something. The problem did turn out to be BIOS related though, for anybody who's interested.

I had look at the disk access method in the Award CMOS setup. There was four different methods there: Normal, Large, LBA and Auto. I had tried the first three, and I assume 'Auto' would only choose one of the first three anyway. It seems I was wrong. As soon as I set the Access Method to Auto, FDISK could see 38,890MB. This was at about three in the morning, I bought the disk at 11:00AM.

I never thought of going to the Seagate site...*slaps forehead* - I'm a dumbass.

pAp
 
I wasted hours once trying to get a new computer to recognize a hard drive that I knew worked in another machine. I knew it worked cause I tried it at least ten times. Turned out I had to remove the master/slave jumper completely, and it worked fine!

Twist
 
Glad it worked out for you.

LBA should have worked also, "Auto" usually just means that it re-detects the drive on each reboot and selects the best setting, which is almost always LBA. "Large" is a very short-lived standard that nobody liked. "Normal" means no translation, this is what you would use if you were installing Disk manager, or a different file system like Novell or Unix.
 
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