Hard drive upgrade problem

[usuallyconfused]

I have a 13GB hard drive, but I need to increase it. The PC is about 4 years old, (a 450MHz Pentium 3 with an Award Modular Bios v4.51 PG) so I knew there would be an issue over what the largest drive the motherboard/bios would accept. However, I put a 40GB in as a primary slave and it saw it, so I tried to use DriveCopy to move everything across.

This failed because it said that 'EZ-Drive has been detected on drive 1, but EZ-Drive is corrupt', which was knews to me since I didn't know EZ-Drive was on there. This sounded like a problem I didn't need, so I decided to start from scratch, add the 40GB drive as a primary master, install W2K and then add the old drive to copy all the data across.

Problem is, the Bios will not see the new drive as a primary master, although it did see it as a primary slave and I have tried everything in the Bios I could think of.

At this stage I am just after some advice - does it sound like my system probably will not accept a 40GB drive?

Thanks.

 

[hughk]

why dont you install the OS on the drive as a slave as long as there isnt a hd on the primary master is shouldnt make any problems, once you are finished you can put the first disk back, either as a secondary m/s or even as the primary master but have you bios boot you into the second hdd

 

[Freestone]

Check the jumpers on the new hard drive - how are they set?

Try another IDE cable. Perhaps the original got damaged during the swap?

BIOS setting for IDE interface set to Auto?

 

[wolluf]

Have you looled for a bios upgrade for your mobo?

When 40GB drive is installed as slave does it appear on POST screen as 40GB? (or did you not check this - just noticed it was available in Windows - which version of Windows are you running? Or does it see it as 32GB?). If the bios can recognise it correctly as a slave, then it should also as a master.

 

[usuallyconfused]

Thanks for the replies and I can report that the cable is fine, the HD jumper has always been set as master or slave depending upon the circumstances, the Bios has been set to auto and yes wolluf, the post screen does only show it as 32GB.

Ignoring the problem of seeing it as a slave but not a master (which I haven't retried yet), I have made some progress.

What I usually do when installing W2K from scratch (or doing a complete re-install) is to boot from a W98 boot disk, use FDisk to partition as necessary, reformat the drive and then install W2K. However, having created a single partition on the new HD, DOS would not see it, so I could not format it. I then booted into W2K and the drive was recognised as 32GB and I was able to format it from within W2K.

I have clearly made errors along the way and have now made the following assumptions:
1) My bios/motherboard combination cannot see a drive greater than 32GB.
2) W98, or the version of DOS loaded with the boot disk cannot see partitions as large as 32GB, but would have been able to had I partitioned the drive as smaller partitions.
3) W2K can see larger partitions.

I have looked for information on the Award Modular Bios v4.51 PG, but I cannot find anything that says what drive size it will recognise or what upgrade is available, but I will keep looking.

I have also run DriveCopy again and there is no mention of EZ-Drive. However, I may have tried it before partitioning the new drive, so it could have been the only error message it had available and nothing to do with EZ-Drive.

So, I now have the new drive as a second drive, but have not copied everything over yet, as I may well start from scratch anyway - always a good option.

If anyone can comment on my assumptions above, that would be great. Otherwise, Happy New Year!

 

[wolluf]

1. I'd agree, your bios has a 32GB limitation. There may be a bios upgrade available to fix this. You need to identify your motherboard to check this out - lots use 'Award Modular Bios v4.51 PG'. There should be some identifying codes on the POST screen at boot - often in bottom left of screen (press the pause/break key to freeze the screen so you can read them). Try Googling with them (and/or post them here - and we'll try to help) - there are a number of good sites which help identify boards & often point you to manufacturer's site too (eg,

http://www.plasma-online.de/index.h...glish/identify/serial/mainboard/mb_fic.html).

2. I'd disagree - win98 fdisk/format can cope with partitions up to c. 128GB (max for fat32). The problem here could be the way the bios is 'recognising' the 32GB (as you've been having trouble running it as master, suspect its marginal that bios is seeing it at all - may not be good enough for win98

3. 2k basically ignores bios & its drivers seems to be quite happy seeing 32GB.

If you can't find bios upgrade, some possibilities:-

1. Drive may have a 'limiting' jumper setting, which will effectively turn it into a 32GB drive. Bios should then see this (you lose 8GB of course).

2. Could buy a PCI controller card to connect drive to.

3. Could use overlay softwere to get over the restriction - but can cause problems if you want to reconfigure things later.