will an LBA mode disk work for NT partition?

[Axel]

Having trouble loading NT 4.0 terminal server edition and the last thing I can think to change to enable the load to creat a OS partition during the install is FDISKing the primary IDE master drive and resetting the BIOS for normal away from LBA mode where it is right now.

This is on an ASUS P/I-P6NP5 motherboard with 80MB of RAM - system was formerly a win95 system that I added a SCSI drive and CD-ROM to. It's a P200 board and has a 2.1GB WD Caviar HD on the primary IDE and an ASUS PCI-SC200 SCSI adapter with the CD-ROM and another 2GB scsi drive.

It sees the SCSI stuff, but won't load the OS partition there. It does see the IDE drive on post, but won't identify it as a mass storage device during install. I'm thinking I need to FDISK and alter the CMOS on the drive to normal from LBA -

What do you think?

I've got a few things to follow up on this morning, but will check here for your suggestions before I start working on it again this afternoon.

Note that the manual command to scroll through the different drivers it loads during install did not identify the IDE drive.

The WD is a 22100, I believe. I surfed WD, but didn't see it listed and didn't see anything special about NT formating. Eventually, most if not all of the 2GB IDE will be NTFS. Might have a small FAT16 part on there as well for older files, etc. etc.

[Erny Baghak II]

There are a couple of things I don't quite understand...

You want to load NT onto the SCSI drive right? not the IDE one. But the IDE one would do as a last resort...

what partitions do either drives have right now? are they freshly formatted. and if there is a primary then was it definately created with Large Disk Support NOT enabled?

Is it that you can't get the Adaptec driver to install while installing NT or is that already set up and NT won't create a partition on the SCSI drive and then install?

sorry for not understanding!

[Axel]

I'd like the OS partition on the IDE primary drive - The SCSI stuff seems to be recognized, but I'm not sure if it sees the SCSI drive correctly as it keeps saying it finds no formatted mass-storage device on which to load the OS partition.

It's loading the drivers for the adapter and the CD-ROM on the SCSI, but, come to think of it, it might not be seeing the SCSI HD either.

Currently, both drives are clean - nothing on them - I know I fdisked and formatted the IDE drive. - I don't remember formating the SCSI HD, however.

Only thing that comes to mind is that the IDE HD is set to LBA mode in the CMOS settings - I think I may need to re-fdisk that drive and set the CMOS setting to normal. That's what I'll be trying this afternoon unless the board can give me any other ideas.

[Axel]

I'm thinking I might have a bad mobo, ide cable, and/or drive.

Now, no matter what, it can see the WD 22100, but it can't access anything in it.
Tried another FDISK on it and it took the drive size down to 503MB - it's a 2.11GB drive.

So - tried to fdisk again after a reboot and it wasn't having any - swapped IDE cables - nope - can no longer write to that disk at all or read anything on it.

So - tried an ole 340mb hd I have - can see the drive and the BIOS detects it, but again - nothing but errors - can't even format it.

So - now I'm on HD #3 - a maxtor 1.6GB - brand new out of the anti-static bag with a new cable -

As I have made so many changes - I'm starting the NT4 install from scratch - reformating the 3 floppies and everything - lets see if it'll take this.

BTW - the 1.6GB drive is also LBA mode and I'm not going to try to change that.

I'll post again as I work through this system....