jam57
12-28-1999, 11:46 AM
Hi all, just got a western digital 10.2 gig, 7200 rpm drive,went to install, in my bios tried auto detect and bios found the correct size but not the correct cylinder size. westerns web site says :
cylinders 16383
my bios(which has been flashed recently) only detects cylinders as 19870. tried manual and no go. will this have any effect on my hard drive? as I am using this drive as I type, set to "19870" cylinders. Thanks, Jim.
If it works, don't fix it. If it doesn't work, set it to what the factory says. If neither works, then check out the motherboard's web site to see if they have an FAQ or message board that applies to the drive problem.
The size shows up as 10.2 gig in the bios and fdisk (or extremely close to that, not bigger or smaller, although smaller will work) so you should be ok.
Physical are the actual heads, cylinders and sectors per track of the hard drive.
Logical are the heads, cylinders and sectors per track that the drive and the BIOS table can agree on. They might look very different and don't confuse them. In this case, it sounds like you just want the drive to work properly.
If the bios is showing the correct size of the disk, it's just translating so that it and the drive can agree. When it's not showing the correct size, then you can use a formula to setup for your drive.
HDD in megs=(Cylinders x Heads x Sectors per track x sector size) / 1048576
If you have an older system that wasn't made for drives over 520 meg, then you use one of the utilities that are installed on the MBR to translate.
I usually just let the bios and drive do their thing, as long as the size is correct. Use factory when nothing else works.