Ultra ATA or no??? plz help!

[Pollux]

Just got my new 20.5 GB ibm hard drive from mwave. it's supposed to be Ultra ATA but this is the error that i'm getting. I have an Abit BP-6 motherboard and i've installed the drivers so it supports ultra ata. I matched up the ultra cable with the first ultra ide slot (ide slot 3). When i boot it says something to the effect of invalid primary master drive. i looked on the hard drive and it says 7200rpm ATA/IDE. Now i believe that i'm doing everything right so my question is this: DID i in fact do everything correctly and if so how can i be sure i was sent an ultra ata drive? i know this is a bit unclear but i would appreciate all help. thanks
-pollux

[Pollux]

C'mon, i know that some of you geniuses know the answer to this question http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif. I'll make it easier. is there any way that i can tell whether the hard drive is Ultra ATA or not?
thanks a bundle
-pollux

[stu]

hmmmm I presume u are talking of UDMA 66 as apposed to 33.

I have an ABIT UDMA 66 controller card and when my system boots the splash screnn loads my hard drives and says UDMA 4 for the UDMA 66 and UDMA 2 for the 33 drive. apart from that run some speed checks on your drive and compare them to UDMA 33.

Or if your happy with its performance leave it.

[Biff]

Hi Pollux
On my be6 I had to make sure blue connector was plugged into m/b and the black on the h/d hope this helped http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[Susan]

Did you FDisk and reformat the drive yet? FDisk should solve your error message.

[Pollux]

alright... under the computer properties device manager i go to scsi and it says there are two Hpt366 ultra something or others installed. but when i'm booting up the screen says Bios for HPT366 not installed. any abit people know how to solve this problem?

susan, why would i re-fdisk and re-format the drive? everything is already installed and all?
thanks all
-pollux

[Mntsnow]

Pollax

I from what I'm gathering from all the posts I would suggest that you double check your BOOT SEQUENCE in the bios.
If you are wanting to boot FROM the ata66 drive the sequence needs to be

EXT, A, C (ATA66,Floppy,ATA33)

Mntsnow

[Susan]

Ooops - sorry 'bout that Pollux. Missed the 'I installed the drivers' part. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/redface.gif

I'm using a Promise card, and the only time I ran into that message about the BIOS was when I had the jumpers on the drive incorrectly set. Check those too.



[This message has been edited by Susan (edited 12-23-1999).]

[Pollux]

mntsnow,
could you expand on your post? i'm not sure i understand correctly. i'm trying to get my c: to be the ultra ata. right now i have it set in the regular 33 ide slot on my abit bp6 but i'd like to move it to my ultra ata ide slot. why would i set the boot sequence to ext, a, c if my c is going to be the ultra device? thanks a bundle

no problem susan... thanks anyhow http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif
-pollux

[Detemeat]

Pollux, set it to ext, a, c. than go down a little further down on that bios screen, you will see a option to say what your ext means; i.e. scsi, UMDA, etc. Choose umda and your computer should recognize it.
Detemeat
p.s. Sorry about the bad spelling...*hic*
I've had a few brewhaha's celebrating x-mas with the wife and two daughters. Merry Christmas All!!!

[Pollux]

Alright, i did all that and now when it starts up it still says "Primary master hard disk fail" however if i press f1 everything starts and seems to run normally. does anybody have any idea why it is giving me this message. i'm not sure what it's telling me. i have the jumpers on my hard drive set to master and i have the boot sequence set to ext, a, c with the ext being the ULTRA. thanks a bundle to everybody helping.
-pollux

[Pollux]

nobody knows why it's saying this? primary master hard disk fail? i'm not sure what could be the problem. thanks
-pollux

[arn]

This sounds like the problem:

Setting the boot sequence a,c,ext,; ext in this case means "boot from cd-rom".

Just below it says "boot sequence Ext means" and this should say "SCSI".

Let us know if this helped.

I almost forgot, get WinTune to see how it is running. I got around 68M/S without O/C and at 100fsb x 5.5 I get 104M/S with an IBM 9 gig and a BE6 M/B.

arn

[This message has been edited by arn (edited 12-27-1999).]

[bubblehd]

Arn,

Not sure I agree with your post. I have a BP6 running two 10GB ATA-66 drives. I believe my boot sequence is set to ext, a, c. and I'm sure that the 'ext' must be set to UDMA, not SCSI. Unfortunately I'm not at my Abit system at the moment, otherwise I would take a peak. Will post later tonight after digging up some more information at home.

[bubblehd]

Pollux,

I believe your original question was 'how can I be sure I was sent an ultra ATA drive?'. The easiest way is to hit the IBM home page and search for the specs on you model (from the HDD). Chances are that it IS a UDMA-66 drive, and you can find some good information at www.bp6.com (http://www.bp6.com) regarding steps to setup the UDMA-66 drivers. Keep in mind that this may be for a different motherboard (don't know which ABIT you're running), but it should be VERY similar. They also have a great message board with numerous posts regarding this matter.

My feelings are that you are, and will continue, running in ATA-33 mode until you resolve the 'primary master hard disk fail' problem.

[This message has been edited by bubblehd (edited 12-30-1999).]

[tlwhite76]

Pollux, my first post. I've been following sysop for awhile. I have a BE6 and had a similar problem with the ATA66 HD. After I upgraded to the most recent bios the problem went away. Give it a shot.

[tlwhite76]

Pollux, did you get this fixed. The BIOS upgrade will take care of the "press F1" to continue problem. This has been a fairly common problem up to now with ABITs boards that support ATA 66.

Filename: BP6NJ.EXE
Date: 11/17/1999
ID: NJ NOTE:

Supports 533Mhz(66Mhz FSB), 550Mhz(100Mhz FSB) and 600Mhz(100Mhz FSB).
Fxies the STD function.
Updates the HPT 366's BIOS to rev. 1.21.
Adds the "A, EXT, C" option.
Fixes the general password issue.
Supports 40GB harddisks and above, However we aren't quite sure what the precise capacity is, since the current maximun harddisk on the market is 40GB.
Supports MPS rev. 1.4.
Supports Power recovery function after the AC power back.
(You may enable it under INTERGRATED PERIPHERALS of CMOS SETUP.)

[Pollux]

thanks tlwhite76!
i didn't have to upgrade to the new bios, although i think i should. the problem went away when i reset the IDE hard disk detect back to "auto" instead of "user" ... haha, duh on my part! anyhow now the bios does not detect any kind of hard drive. is this because i don't have the updated bios? can you tell me how to "flash" it to upgrade, i know it says in the book, but it is a little vague and i don't wanna mess anything up after coming this far! thanks again for keeping this thread up to date!
-pollux

[tlwhite76]

Pollux, BBA probably describes the relationship between the ATA66 controllers and the motherboard best. I've copied his post below. I'd recommend you update the BIOS anyway as it also updates the HPT 366's BIOS to rev. 1.21. I haven't had any hiccups with the update. Nope, the hard drives aren't supposed to be recognized in the BE6 BIOS.

BBA
Ultimate Member posted 01-05-2000 03:15 PM
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Yea, the 'external device' boot selection catches a lot of people because you think it's one of the boards ide controllers. I just look at it as not being part of the mb or bios, but the controller is a seperate card in itself and it all makes sense.