My Bios doesn't detect my Hard Drive

[Axel]

Have you "reseated" the hard drive cable inside the CPU? Possibly, the hard drive cable is loose - happened to me. If you were adding a new hard drive, make sure the IDE cable connecting to the HHD has the red marked side of the cable closest to the power plug. Check the motherboard book which should have come with your system for how the IDE cable should be plugged into the board IDE slot.

[WATTSON]

My computer is a PackardBell 366 and the drive is a IBM DeskStar 34GXP (34GB).

What should I do in the BIOS:

If I set the Primary IDE Slave on "Auto" and save Bios Settings and reboot,
the computer stays blocked on the first screen of the Packard Bell booting.
It's the same thing when I put a formated floppy in a:
In that case, the computer is really crashed. The Ctrl-Alt-Sup keys doesn't
work.

If I set the Primary IDE Slave on "Auto" and enter the value, I've got a
opened window wich says "Waiting for HDD Detect". I wait but nothing
happend, the computer is blocked. In that case, the computer is really
crashed. The Ctrl-Alt-Sup keys doesn't work.

Note:
Ultra ATA/66 is disabled on the Hard Drive to fit with my MotherCard UDMA/33.
I've already tried the solution to put that disk in the master mode, but it doesn't work.
The connections are correct.

Have you got an idea? Please help...

[toms111]

Your hard drive is probably too big for your bios version. Check with Packard Bell and see if a flashable update is available. Alternativly you may be able to use diskmanager software to trick the bios and allow it to use this harddrive but I prefer bios upgrade.

[WATTSON]

Yes, the cables are ok. there is just one way to blug them anyway.

In fact, the BIOS doesn't detect my hard disk but Disk Manager (a utility from IBM) detect the drive, so I conclude that the cables are ok. I did a test yesterday with a second cable: it's the same thing...

If I set the CHS of the BIOS, and when I boot the machine, the computer
crashes just at:

Primary Master: 8440 etc...
Primary Slave: [cursor] ... and that's all.

Not matter if there is a disk in a: or not

The only way to boot on a disk is to uninstall from the BIOS the Primary
Slave (So the IBM Drive). If not, the computer is enable to boot on a disk, it crashes before.

I'm wondering if I have to upgrade my BIOS to have better results. My BIOS is the AMIBIOS version 1.16. What do you think?

[Pantion]

Yeap is your BIOS alright... either find a BIOS update on AMIBIOS page or PackardBell.

If you can't still use the drive you don't have another choice, but to buy an IDE controller card... it wouldn't be so bad, since you could get a card that supports UDMA 66 and take advantage of your new drive /forum/smile.gif

[WATTSON]

Thank you for your help all /forum/smile.gif

Finally, when I moved the jumpers from the position 34GB Slave to 32GB Slave, my BIOS had recognized the drive!

Then, I used Disk Manager from IBM to terminate the configuration.

At the moment, I've booted on my first drive (4GB) Windows 98 and I'm formatting the drive of 32 GB (instead of 34GB /forum/frown.gif ) I'm praying to not have other problem /forum/wink.gif