Harddrive blues

[t048]

I just bought a Western Digital 15.3gb drive and I have been having problems installing it. I called WD's tech support and they couldn't figure it out, either. I have a cyrix 6x86 166mhz board and I have been using a fujitsu 1.4gb harddrive. I've tried using a standard EIDE cable and an ultra ata/66 cable.

Anyway, I got the installation program from WD's website. It will recognize the drive (as will the bios), but will lock up when I try to run the installation part of the program. I have tried configuring the drive as the master, the slave, and the only drive with no luck. I did, however, manage to get windows98 to recognize the drive as two removable disks of about 8.4gb each, but won't let me write to it.

Any hints or help? Thanks.

[werd]

have you run the WD diagnostic proggy on it. . .if it gives you a number RMA that sucka back to WD and you will get a new drive, you just pay shipping to WD.

[JimG]

Given the processor you have, I'm assuming you have a motherboard and BIOS that's equally old (no offense). Many older systems can't recognize a HD bigger than 8.4 Gig . . that might explain why you're seeing it like that in Windows. As for your install problem (i had a similar problem, turned out to be a bad floppy disk, not the HD), try this: Set the HD as master, disconnect your other HD. Use a boot disk to get to a DOS prompt (make sure it has FDISK on it). Run FDISK and see whether or not you can format the drive. It's a shot in the dark, but might work. Good luck!

[This message has been edited by JimG (edited 09-30-2000).]

[Fingers]

Bios' dated prior to January 1998 might not support HDD's larger than 8.4GB.

The Western Digital utililty disk (Data Lifegaurd Tools) should let you overcome this barrier by installing drive overlay software (EZ-Bios). I've always upgraded my hardware instead of using drive overlay software...Yuk http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/frown.gif

You are running the WD utility from a floppy disk, right?

[t048]

Since WD tech support told me that my motherboard and cpu were compatible with the drive, i hadn't really considered that my hardware or bios was too outdated to use a larger drive. So, I hooked it up to a more recent AMD something or other computer and managed to get it to work like a charm. I guess I've put off upgrading long enough, it's time to bite the bullet and pull out the credit cards...

[Win_98]

It be cheaper to get a dma/66 pci controller or dma/33 that support more then 8gig. When using them you must disable your onboard or they will conflict, or they just don't work together.