I have hit the most problematic sec

[Legendiva]

I have hit the most problematic second HD installation I have ever encountered. Beginning to think I won't be able to pull this one off.
Win98. Mobo BIOS will only autodetect HDs up to 35GB. Boot Sequence is A,C,SCSI. Current HD is a 13GB. Tried to add a Western Digital 60GB. Tried every conceivable configuration; juggled existing HD, DVD, CDROM and CDRW. No way. It cannot be autodetected, and I have not found any way to get the BIOS to accept it, either. ( so, it does not appear in the BIOS. )
Have a weird situation now.
Added a Promise Controller Card. Put the 60GB HD on it, by itself, as Master on the first IDE ( tried every configuration here as well. ) FDISKED it and started into the FORMATTING process but got stopped at the "Active Partition" point; it will not permit this. ( Windows found the Promise. Boot screen lists it, and shows the HD on it. Device Manager lists the Promise, and the HD. The HD shows as having no Drive Letter Assigned. The HD does not show up in My Computer. )
I want the second drive to be bootable.
Would I have to use a SCSI HD?
Any ideas on how to correct this?


Thanks,
Legendiva

 

[Snickle]

I have a 2.5 year old AMD Athlon 700MHz on a GigaByte GA-7IXE motherboard. The BIOS has a hard drive limit of 32GB [common for boards that old]. My next step will be to flash the BIOS to get support for up to 75GB drives and then get a 40GB or 60GB drive.

I've tried add-in PCI controller cards in the past but have not had any raving successes with them unless disabling the on-board IDE channels.

You don't mention the OS but here is a page on dual-booting that may be of some interest:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q306559

 

[Legendiva]

Sorry, I forgot to mention the OS. I was intending to use only Win98SE on both drives. My husband's system: he has some special progs for Video Editing and Karaoke/CDG progs, and I wanted to put those on one separate HD ( the 60GB ), in addition to using it for storage of those video, audio files.
This Mobo is a Gigabyte too ( GA-6BXC ). It had the latest flash when we built the system. I see that there are newer ones available (which enable the larger HD). I guess that is what I need to do at this point. But....I have never flashed a BIOS as of yet.

1) Do I need to use ALL the latest Flashes, from the current revision on up? You can't just grab one in the middle, for example if it has what you are looking for, without first installing those previous flashes can you?

2) What is the best and safest way to do a BIOS Flash?



Thanks, Legendiva

 

[wolluf]

1. You just need to flash once (latest one is usually best bet - but you can just take one with what you want included - ie, large HD support).

2. The website with the flash upgrades should have good instructions on how to do this (it varies depending on mobo & bios type). If you follow them, its usually straightforward - no good giving general instructions.

 

[ANFPS26]

The Promise controller card has it's on bios also. Did you install it off the floppy that came with the card? There is probably a later version on Promise's web site. There was on mine. "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing....."