How do I make BIOS see all my HD?

[Hecate]

I am running a Pentium II 266Mhz with an IBM Deskstar 20GB HD as the Prim. Master and a Quantum 6GB HD as the slave. My BIOS stopped seeing the 20GB HD after it was accedentally disconnected. I cannot auto-detect the drive, I'm assuming because it is too large. I've attempted to manually input the information into BIOS, but it will not recognize the whole drive. I know it can work, but I can't figure it out how to make it work.
On the HD, it tells me the C/H/S settings are 16383/16/63. When I input these numbers and set it to LBA, The size becomes 8457.
On the Deskstar website they tell me to input settings of 1024/16/63. When I did this, the size became 528.
I was previously running the computer with all of the 20GB availible. I have data on this disk that I do not want to lose, if possible. Any help will be gretly appreciated.

 

[wolluf]

Could you clarify some stuff please:-

- 'after it was accedentally disconnected' - what happened? any damage to hard drive?
- you're sure it was working ok previously? - did/does it have overlay software installed to allow use of drive larger than bios can support.
- has anything else happened? (eg, drives don't usually become accidentally disconnected...) - the more clues the better the response.
- have you tried (re) flashing bios with latest version?

 

[bios303]

The first thing to do is to back up your important files.Take both hard drives out put an empty hard drive in as master install your operating on this hard drive.Then put your 20gig hard drive in as a slave drive. Boot up go to my computer,the 20 gig hard drive should now be classed as D drive,double click then copy and paste any important files onto the C drive.
Take both hard drives out put the 20 gig back in as master c drive.Use the start up disk type fdisk select y for full hard drive usage. then delete all partitions then re create 1 partition make it active.Re install your operating system
and see how it goes.Don't forget to re set the defaults in the bios setup.

 

[Hecate]

To Wolluf:
#1 -I was trying to replace my fan and was examining the connectors. The conectors were not properly re-attatched when I restarted my computer (Due to me getting distracted). There should be no damage to the drive.
#2 -My father was the one who initially worked on the computer, and it was deffinately seeing the whole 20GB prior to this. I did use fdisk to enable large disk support and to partition the drive into two 10GB, back when it was all working.
#3 -As far as I know, my BIOS has never been updated. I am a little hesitant to mess too much with the BIOS because I know it was working perfectly before.

To bios303:
My BIOS is entirely not seeing my 20GB HD. I have attempted to set as the slave, but it still will not see it. I cannot run fdisk on it, because according to the computer, it is not actually there.

 

[wolluf]

Hecate - so the disk is NOT appearing on the POST screen? (I thought it was appearing - but wrong size)

So is it actually powering up? (are power & ide connectors working/connected properly - you should have at least one spare power connector).

 

[Hecate]

No, the disk is not being seen.
I just tried inputting the C/H/S values manually in bios, which caused bios to assume there was a 8.4GB disk there and then saved the settings. The POST then showed a 8.4GB Master, a 6GB Slave and my two CD-ROM drives. I put my CD boot disk in, so the CD drivers were loaded. It allocated the CD-ROMs c:/ and d:/ ... It did not give either HD a letter so I could not access either one.

As for whether it is powering up: the ide and power connectors seem to be working correctly because I've swapped them several times with the Slave's connectors and my BIOS can auto-detect my Slave.

 

[bios303]

option 1: setup the default values in the bios set up, or select auto configure so the computer recognises the size of the Hard Drive automaticly.
2:Try installing a Partition manager programme.

 

[wolluf]

Hecate,

Can you try the drive in another machine?

I don't understand why it is not being 'auto-detected' if it does show as 8.4GB if you put values in (and presumably was auto detected correctly previously, before this problem). Have you changed any jumpers on the hard drive? (some have a 'limiting' jumper - in this case would limit to c. 8GB for backward compatibility).

What does your boot CD do? (is it just a boot floppy written to CD?). Can you boot from win98 boot floppy? If you can & run fdisk, what does it show in partition information?

 

[Hecate]

Sorry, I was busy at work and couldn't get back to you.
Right now, there is no other machine I can test my drive on. I did change jumpers, (to make it a slave) but I have moved them back to the original "Master" position. My boot disk is a floppy that loads the CD drivers so I can install Windows. It just happened to be the boot disk I had laying around, that's why I tried it. When I tried to run fdisk, it said no drive was present.

I asked some of my Comp Sci buddies for assistance, and they all suggested flashing my bios, so I thought I'd give it a try. Unfortunately, my Flash Memory comes up Unknown, which seams to mean I can't Flash my bios.

Right now I'm trying to decide if I might be more satisfied just dropping my computer off the roof of my house.

 

[wolluf]

If you're sure you've got correct bios version (from motherboard manufacturer's website preferably & their flash utility) & you've followed directions to flash correctly too, sounds like your bios/motherboard may be the problem.

If this is the case, you'd need a replacement & you will also need to mount the drive elsewhere to retrieve your data (unless you manage to find same model motherboard - as drive may not boot into windows with different motherboard).

 

[tbirdkid]

From what you have said.....It would be my guess from my experience that you cooked the IDE electronics on the HDD. The only other thing I would suggest is to see if you can get fdisk to see the drive with the settings on the drive and set the bios to auto.....not lba.