During bootup: IDE device reads bzbzbzbzbzbzbz bzbzbbzbzbzbz

[kareem]

Yep. That's what happened. IT all started when I had installed a new directx10 graphics card. I decided that I didn't want to use the card; so I powered down the machine and took out the new card and replaced it with the older card. It's a Vista machine. When I booted it back up. I got a long persistant red HD light which made me think something was wrong. So I waited until it finally said Unable to load OS. So astonished, I turned it off and turned it back on. I started watching the BIOS info screen, when it showed the IDE device loading, it read"bzbzbzbzbzbzbzbzbzbzbz bzbzbzbzbzb". It should have read WD8543253 (western digital and so forth).

it's a 320Gig HDD. I noticed that it only displays the drive size of 300Gig. Is there a virus on the other 20 gig causing a problem? Is there actually a HDD mechanical issue? I checked all cables - they all appear well connected and not loose. They're SATA drives.

- Kareem

[Train]

Decimal vs. Binary:
For simplicity and consistency, hard drive manufacturers define a megabyte as 1,000,000 bytes and a gigabyte as 1,000,000,000 bytes. This is a decimal (base 10) measurement and is the industry standard. However, certain system BIOSs, FDISK and Windows define a megabyte as 1,048,576 bytes and a gigabyte as 1,073,741,824 bytes. Mac systems also use these values. These are binary (base 2) measurements.

[Sterling_Aug]

Have you flash updated to the latest version of the BIOS for the mobo yet?

[kareem]

yep. I've flashed it back last year. I'll take a look to see what the latest bios is. Meanwhile, you think it's Bios related? Even with the HDD light, the unable to load the OS message? Someone else told me that it could be a trashed boot sector on the HDD.... what do you think?

[kareem]

I got to say that this HDD drive is a 320Gig drive but under dos and windows, it's only showing up as 298.9 Gigs in size. I cant figure out why the rest of the drive is not showing up in Windows or in DOS. And that's very weird to me because I cant do anything about it since every perspective seems to show that it's only a 298.9Gig drive when it's 320G.

What do I do?

[kareem]

It's showing up as capacity equaling 298.9Gb!

It's showing up this way under DOS as well as Windows Vista (and during installation of the OS.) I can't seemingly do anything about it since all points to a capacity of 298.9Gb. I'm starting to think something ominous has happened since I started having problems with viruses recently. What do you think I should do? I'm completely aware that Windows uses a certain portion of the HDD for it's own purposes but 20Gb seems toooo much to be normal.

- Kareem

[Ol'Tunzafun]

There is nothing wrong with your drive. That is exactly what it should be showing. A gigabyte is 1,073,741,824 bytes, not 1,000,000,000 bytes. If you divide 320 by 1.073741824 you get 298 and change.

WesternDigital FAQ

[Lgbpop]

It was explained to you in post #2 as well.

Your BIOS could be a bit scrambled from changing the vidcard twice. The configuration settings in Vista are probably looking for the DX10 card you put in even though it's not there any more. Did you change the drivers accordingly, and uninstall the original card before installing the new one each time?

Try clearing the BIOS by using the CMOS jumper or removing the CMOS battery for 30 seconds or so, then restarting.

[Peter M]

320GB drives have 300GiB. No news there, mind your SI units.

If that happened after changing the videocard, then please go back in and connect the IDE cable properly again, on both ends please.

Oh, besides, do yourself a favor and stop fscking about with BIOS updates and CMOS clearing. Some people here seem to believe that causes and cures everything.

[BipolarBill]

In defense of clearing CMOS, overzealous overclocking can force the need for resetting. Power surges can also necessitate it. I've seen a lot of systems with USB issues where clearing CMOS fixed the problem.

Admittedly, simply unplugging these PCs for a few seconds helped as well. Most novice users like to feel some sense of control, so I have them remove their motherboard battery as a sort of placebo. It's kind if like sending a nervous father to boil water during childbirth. Whether it really fixed the problem, I'll never know because I rarely get a callback about it. Since they don't call back after I recommend this, I must assume that it helped. It certainly makes *me* feel better.

Conversely, I can count on both hands how many times a BIOS update actually made a difference. CPU compatibility updates are fairly common. I've had to update BIOS maybe 3 times for hard drive LBA recognition in 10 years of building and servicing PCs. I needed a BIOS update once for boot device switching refinement. That's about it.

[Baddog]

Also recheck the boot order of your drives.

[AllGamer]

to me it seems like that HDD might be just too big for that old BIOS to handle
probably it needs a firmware upgrade, if it's compatible.

try forcing the HDD to SATA 1 mode instead of SATA 2 mode using the jumper
on EIDE version you can force it to read half the size also with the jumper so it should display 160gb instead of 320gb

[BipolarBill]

It seems to me that most members are just guessing. There is nothing wrong with the size recognition here. The user doesn't even know that was detected before the current "problem".

If you don't know, stop guessing please.