40 gig hard drive not showing up in system

[campersand]

I have a new 40 gig ata/100 hard drive that I am trying to install. my abit bx6 motherboard has the latest bios version which is supposed to support large drives but neither the auto or the user defined settings work with the drive.
I can't figure out what's wrong here. maybe I need a different cable? i have a 40 pin. maybe my board doesn't support ata/100? I've looked and cannot find any ata related info on the bx6. How would I find out if the board supports ata/100 or not?
Thank you for any help.

-Cameron

 

[CitrixEngineer]

You need a special cable for ATA66/100 hard disks.

This article from Quantum, specifying the ATA66/100 features shows why; The cable is not just 40-pin, it has 80 conductors and a new interface which includes CRC.

http://www.quantum.com/src/whitepapers/wp_ultraata100.htm

Old disks work on the new interface - but not the other way around!

The BX6 does not support ATA66/100 - it's too old. Even the 2.0 revision has the old UDMA33 interface.

http://www.abit.nl/english/product/motherboards/bx6.htm

...unless you add an ABIT HotRod controller (or the Promise controller, but personally, I stick with ABIT!).

http://www.abit.nl/english/product/peripheral cards/h100.htm

- and gain the advantage that you can later convert to hardware RAID (0 or 1), should you wish.

Hope this helps

 

[campersand]

Thanks a lot. That helps tremendously.