hard drive not working

[joesville03]

I have a 2.45 gig hard drive my buddie just gave me a 8 1/2 gig the hard drive is from a working system. I seen it working before i took it .When i installed it on my comp. it won't work . when i boot up it reconizes it and then just stops there.I also tried to run the small drive as master and the bigger one as a slave the same results.It is already set up with windows 98 . i'm not sure what to do and can use some help
Thanks
Joe

[paramufay]

Your bios DOES NOT support a 8 gig drive.

DO NOT attempt to "flash" or "upgrade" bios.

It can be made to work however, using a "fool the bios" program such as discwizard or EZ bios or any one of several other programs.

the large drive will need to be the master and the smaller one the slave.

personally I like to use the manufactures program but there are 3rd party programs that may work just as well.

First, who is the HD manufacture?

[Midknyte]

Check the motherboard manufacturer's website to see if there is a bios update that supports the 8+GB drives. If you have a PII or a late Pentium MMX, there is a good chance that your board will support up to a 32GB drive with a bios update.

Alternately, you could use a drive overlay software like ezbios, but I would try the bios first. ezbios comes with maxtor's maxblast and westerndigital's ez drive software.

You might even have to use a "compatibility" jumper setting with certain drives. Maxtor drives use 2 jumpers instead of 1 when using the "compatibility" mode. You'll have to check the manufacturer's website for the proper jumper settings.

If you don't want to do anything i just mentioned, you can get a PCI ATA controller card that has support for larger drives. :D

[Sterling_Aug]

I have to again disagree with Paramufay here:

Flashing the BIOS is not that big a deal. I have flashed well over 100 systems so far and have never had a problem I couldn't fix with it.

EZ Bios and those kinds of "Fooler" programs only cause more problems that they fix. Once they are loaded, it is nearly impossibile to get rid of the programs.

You can easily put any size drive as the master and any size as the slave. It is not necessary to have the larger drive as the master.

Get the most current BIOS for your system and follow the directions to flash it. The manufacturers have made this process much easier in the last few years so it can't be done wrong.

Check her for your BIOS:

http://www.wimsbios.com

Come back here if you still have problems.

[Imperion1]

Have to agree with Sterling. If flashed plenty of mobo bios' and haven't had a problem with one yet.
As for EZbios and other similar programs, they can cause problems. The only way to remove them is to do a low level format on the hard drive. Some people may tell you that fdisk is the same as a low level format, its not. Fdisk is just a way to partition the hard drive.

[paramufay]

Perhaps Mr. Joesville will post his computer specs so everyone can ascertain the the correct actions needed to solve his problem, instead of just condescending each other's post based on our "best guess" as to what we think we know.

[bluemoon]

I am going to chum in my guessing here.
I bet he might have the jumper set wrong.Possibly both to master and both are bootable.

If the hdd is detected on post,I think it should carry on booting......again,guessing.

I agree the bios overlay may cause more trouble then good.But,it you don't have a choice,then,what the heck?

[SPEEDO]

If it will boot far enough to get into the bios what size does the bios see the drive as?

SPEEDO

[biglaker]

Let me ask a question. Why does everyone conclude it's a bios issue? His post stated that he has Win 98 on both drives. If the machine is trying to boot from the new drive, could it not stall simply because it's now seeing a completely new set of hardware than it saw on the original PC?
I think the first problem is to make sure that the bios is first recognizing the drives correctly. Once that is solved, then fdisk should be used to make sure that the new drive is not the one that the computer is booting from. Then Fdisking and Formatting the new drive might be in order. But these last several steps are dependent on whether the bios "sees" the new drive correctly or not. If the bios does not see the new drive correctly, then experimenting with the jumpers may be necessary. I'm not sure if "clearing the CMos" might be a recommended step as well as his first try might have had the incorrect setup that is still causing these problems. If all this doesn't work, then I would agree that flashing the bios or using a controller card would be recommended. Biglaker

[G Ray88]

Joesville03, I would check the HD manufacture's web site for the correct jumper settings on the drive.:)

[joesville03]

Hey,
I got alot of good feedback. If i need to flash the bos how is it done ? I never did that before.Somebody asked what i was running and that is a 8500tuc motherboard with a pentium 200 with 64mb of ram. Also what do you mean by fdisk????

[rockinmale]

I'll take a stab at it....

Fdisk is a dos based hard drive program that allows you to create and delete partitions on the hard drive.

Here's an illustration for you to help you understand.

Picture a Lp record, when you look at the record there are spaces in between each song. Fdisk allows you to setup the hard drive in sections just like a Lp record. Think of each song being 1 partition.

As for partition size, you can create it as big or small as you like. Say you have a 20gb hard drive and you wanted to create 2 partitions. You could create your primary partition 10gb and your other partition 10gb or make 3 partitions one 10 and two 5's. The possibilites are endless.

Fdisk is not a user friendly program. If you dont know what you are doing you can delete all the data on your hard drive. There is a hard drive utility program out there called partition magic. It can create or delete partitions much easier than fdisk. Also it can split partitions without losing any data. Never say never:D

There's a lot more info on creating or deleting primary and logical drives, but im just touching the tip of the iceberg.

I hope the info helps....
Good luck and take care!
rockinmale:cool:

[maximus02143]

http://www.firmware.com/support/bios/fdisk.htm

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~mrscary/fdisk.htm

[mcjamesk]

ok u said the 8.5 gig drive had w98 on it u did'nt say what was on the 2.45 drive? if it is also 98 then i would think BIOS, but if it's 95 then i would think driver incompatabilty

[mcjamesk]

if it recoginizes it in the BIOS then you just need to reload your os on it . it will not boot with 2 hard drives with each having thier own O.S. ,unless you have a boot manager, to tell which one to boot off. if it's recoginized in the BIOS and will not boot you need to reload your O.S. question? do you want 2 drives? pick the one you want as primary; format and reload O.S. the other just format and you can use it for storage. i dont know what you want to do so i could speculate all day. but i'll stop here untill you let us know what you want to do

[joesville03]

sorry i took so long to get back but i haven't been able to get on much lately

the hard drive is a seagate u4 model st38421a 8455 mb
when i boot up it recognizes only 6.01 gig. then freezes there so i guess that the bios can only handle 6 gig rite now some of you are saying to upgrade or flash the bios. and some are telling me to use ez bios as a fool program. not sure what to do. wich one is better and more affective.??? some one also said i can try a pci ata controller card what is this what will this do.
I also have another problem . i have 128mb of ram and my comp. anly recognizes 64 is this the same problem my bios ?????????
let me know thanks Joe

my bios is abios system configuration (c) 1985 - 1995 american megatrends can it be updated ??????????

[ukulele]

it will not boot with 2 hard drives with each having thier own O.S. ,unless you have a boot manager, to tell which one to boot off


Sure it will. I do it every day. I have two drives each with the same image copy, OS and all. If one gets corrupted I just boot to the other one and image the drive back to the corrupted one. It's one quick and easy way to back up everything. I update the image drive every few weeks just to keep it reasonably up to date. :D