Hard Disk Is Misreported as Eight Gigabytes

[DrCrispy]

Hi,

I am currently running Win2k Pro and am having problems with 2k dectecting my second hard it's a Maxtor 40 gig drive. I am unable to use this drive in all other version of windows it works fine, even in windows Me, yet in win2k it tells me that there is only 8 gigs on that drive. I have tried formating the drive as fat32 and ntfs still nothing, I have search Microsofts Knowledge Base for a possible solution without luck, I even upgraded win2k to service pack 1 and didn't work. If anyone knows how I can access this drive in windows your help will be greatly welcome cuz I have no idea what to do

Thanks

Chris

 

[ShaithisDanoveur]

Check your motherboard manufacturer's site for bios updates - this is a common malady with older boards and new drives.

 

[DrCrispy]

I updated my bios and still win2k pro tells me thats there is only 8 gigs on d drive, it's really start to bother me, because I have never had this problem before not even with linux, if anyone has any other ideas please HELP I really need to get to that drive, it's almost impossible to get any work done without it


Thanks for your Help

Chris

 

[Cocoa]

Run disk administrator to see if it sees the rest of the hard drive. We have to run a 40 gig drive with 8 gigs as the main partition, the rest as a second partition.

JP

 

[ericksot]

What size is your primamry Hdd. You could also install a Promise card.

 

[shyster]

DrCrispy,

Are you saying that you have used this same hard disk, on this same motherboard under different operating systems and it had been recognized as the full 40GB?

If that is the case then the only thing to assume is that there is an incompatability between your hard-disk controller/BIOS and Win2K. If this is the case the only possible fix (without changing the mobo) is to try and find an updated driver of some sort.

Good Luck.

 

[cnd2kdotcom]

I would agree with Shyster, try looking for a new ATAPI driver. That was a problem I had with WinNT 4 Server. so it's worth a shot.

 

[techieKid]

Hi,

I've similar problem here.
I've got a 120GB hdd but was recognized as 32GB only .
Tried updating my BIOS (Asus P2L97 motherboard) and patched SP3 for my Win2k OS but still was unsuccessful.
Does anyone know the solution?

How can a new atapi driver help? Is it already in the Win2k SP3?

Appreciate for any inputs.
Thanks.

 

[stehazza]

The Problem isnt with Windows 2000 its with the drive translation in the bios. Is the mother board capable of PIO level 4 drive translation (LBA on older boards)? The problem is that some mother board bios' cannot recongise over a certain number of sectors. ie if you have a drive with 64 heads, 32 cylinders, 28764364 sectors, (40ish GB) and your board only recognises no more than 15000000 sectors. To get round this you can set the drive in the bios to USER and configure manually.... the best way to get round this is to half the number of sectors and double the number of heads. So in this example set the Hds to 128, cylinders remain at 32, and sectors become 14382182.

Make sure you keep the other setting the same though or you will lose drive performance. PIO mode, etc

 

[techieKid]

hi,

i tried to choose "USer" but I wasn't able to manually set the cylinders, heads, sectors, etc...
How can I do that?
Thanks.

 

[stehazza]

It may be one of the other bios settings stopping you from changing the default settings.

Post what make and model your motherboard is and the model number of the drive and I will let you know what you need to do. All bios' will allow you to change the drive settings but some arent very straight forward.


SH
MCSE / CCNA / CNE