Can't create active partion on 60GB Maxtor

[CyberSpaceCowboy]

I'm installing a DiamondMax 60Gb drive on a Promise Ultra100 controller in my system (Maxtor has a util that is supposed to bump the DiamondMax up to ATA100, frankly I'm sceptical that I will see much difference on an 5400RPM drive).

Anyway, I'm caught in a Catch-22. I want to replace all my existing drives with the Maxtor. I installed the drive and controller and partioned the new drive with FDISK and system formated it. I plan to copy an image of my C: drive to the root of the new drive, and images of all my other drives to subdirectories, which I will map to drive letters via SUBST.

Now, since my new drive has the OS, I should be able to disable my onboard IDE controllers and boot from the Maxtor on the Ultra100. I try this and get the message "Not found any [active partion] in HDD". Whoops, I forgot to set the active partion while I was in FDISK. But FDISK only lets you designate an active partion on the first hard drive. Simple, I'll create a boot floppy (never can find one when you need it). But when I boot from a floppy with the onboard IDE disabled and the Maxtor as first hard drive via the Ultra 100, after the "Starting Windows 98" message, I get a divide overflow, "Your program caused a divide overflow error. If the problem persists, contact your program vendor." The same boot floppy works fine with the onboard IDE and enabled and the Ultra100 connected and the onboard IDE doesn't seem to be able to recognize the 60Gb drive.

I figured someone has already run into this problem and worked out a solution.

Thanks

[CujoRbd]

well, until i know the specific specs of your BIOS, as well as the model # of your hard drive, the best i can do is this:

click here (http://www.maxtor.com/diamondmax/information.html) to read how to enable it to work. just simply find the specific line and model number and you should be able to figure it out.

whether or not you can get it fixed yourself through this, please post your BIOS info (manufacturer, version #, etc.) as well as the model number of your HD.


hope this can help you out some!


CujoRbd

[Imperion1]

You can still set up your active partition without having to reformat. Just run fdisk and only tell it to set an active partition.

[CyberSpaceCowboy]

CujoRbd,

The BIOS is Award Modular BIOS v4.51PG v1.1d1 on an FIC KA-6100 board with a VIA Apollo chipset. I downloaded v1.1E from FIC, but the loader program said it didn't recognize the flash file (I doubt it would help, the latest BIOS is dated 1998).

The drive is a Maxtor 96147U8, "Actual Cylinders"-119,108; Max Cylinders-16,383; Heads-16; Sectors-63, 61.4Gb on a Promise Ultra100 controller.

I found out that I could use DriveCopy to set the Active partion on the drive without it being drive 0, I new it had to be good for something. Now I get a down arrow (ASCII 19H) where I would expect to see the "Starting Windows 98" message.

I'm going to try one more time to re-partion and format the drive. I think my BIOS just can't handle booting from such a large drive. I can always boot from one of my old drives.

Thanks everybody for your replies.

[Win_98]

60gigabyte oh boy pretty exciting isn't it? http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif my biggest is 17gig so far and it more then enought for anything. btw: it difficult to partition a 60gig thought you going to have to split them into 15x4 that is 8K cluster or 30x 2 16K cluster each. usuaully an ata100 controller card work best by not disabling your onboard controller. boot from your older drive instead to avoid these partioning headache risky business I tell ya only the expert can do this. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif and even so he still take risk in losing his C drive. there is only little benefit from dma/33 to dma/100 as the drive itself even 60gig does not even use the full 33mb/sec full potential. you will see little boost in performance. it just bandwidth that is much much more then the harddrive can deliver. anyway I think onboard controller are much more reliable and the cost of add controller make it seem unpractical. only if you need more then 4 ide device and you must have at least 300watt of power supply and TowerCase as well