Only see 8.4 Gig of my 40 Gig drive

[archie0]

I have an old Compaq 2000 which has a 2G and a 40G hard drive. I fdisk'ed both drives but when I tried to recreate a partition on the 40G I only see 8.4G. I remember running into this problem when I first installed the drive but now I can't remember what I did to fix it !!! Age I guess !! It's a Western Digital drive.

Thanks

 

[rpearson]

It sounds as though the drive doesnt have INT13 extension support,that would give you the 8.4 recognition on a obviously larger drive.Its an extension to the ATA-2 standard that allows larger hard drives to be recognized above 8.4GB.Are you reinstalling the drive into a differant motherboard than the one it worked on?The terms "old Compaq"tell me that the drive isnt compatible with the controller.

Could you possibly throw out a model # of the drive?

Good luck.

 

[archie0]

It's the same box (motherboard,etc) that it was working in before I wiped the drive. It's a WD400EB drive.

 

[wolluf]

Were you using overlay software before? (used when older mobo/bios can't see whole drive - which sounds like the case here as cablepuller mentioned). Another possible option is finding a bios upgrade (but being Compaq, probably not much chance) that will enable the bios to access larger drives - and obviously you didn't do that before or it would still work.

Or there's a new controller card (goes in PCI slot, Promise seem to be most recommended here).

 

[soaplover]

Try not to have the drive to auto in the bios.
Try manually theese driver parameters .
Drive parameters for WD400EB:

Cylinders 16383
Heads 16
Sectors/Track 63
Landing Zone 16383
" WPC 16383 "


//Regards Soaplover

 

[soaplover]

Drives 8.4 GB and larger all use the same parameters: 16383 cylinders, 16 heads, and 63 sectors. This is due to a limitation designed into the original IDE interface. Hard drives identify themselves to the system BIOS using the "Identify Drive Data." The original design of the IDE interface allowed for values up to 16383 x 16 x 63 (around 8.4 GB) to be used in the Identify Drive Data. In order for drives to identify themselves as being larger than 8.4 GB, a new method was needed. This new method was added on to the Identify Drive Data, and is known as the "Extended Functions."

The extended functions communicate drive size in a more straightforward manner, simply telling the BIOS how many sectors are available on the drive (the capacity can then be calculated by multiplying the number of sectors times 512 bytes). Once the Extended Functions are used, the Cylinders, Heads, and Sectors on the drive are no longer important. All hard drive manufacturers agreed that drives larger than 8.4 GB would report the maximum number of cylinders, heads and sectors, which is 16383 x 16 x 63. The actual size of the drive must be determined by the Extended Functions. Some manufacturers may list larger parameters with their drives, but these drives will still only be able to report 16383 x 16 x 63 in the Identify Drive Data.

In order to make use of drives larger than 8.4 GB, both the system BIOS and the Operating System must be able to interpret Extended Functions. Older Operating Systems such as DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1 are not able to interpret Extended Functions, so they will never be able to use drives larger than 8.4 GB even with the use of Data Lifeguard Tools. Newer OS's, such as Windows 95, 98, and NT are capable of handling larger drives. Windows 95 and 98 require that the system BIOS also support the Extended Functions, while NT only requires that Service Pack 3 be installed. Other OS's such as OS/2 may require special patches to access drives larger than 8.4 GB. Consult your software manufacturer for specifics.



//Regards Soaplover

 

[soaplover]

Overlay:
If your system BIOS does not support drives larger than 8.4 GB then you can add this support by using Data Lifeguard Tools to install your large drive.

If your BIOSs do not properly support 8.4 GB and
larger hard drives. Installing sw with INT 13 functions
will allow the BIOS to access the full capacity of
8.4 GB and larger hard drives. Data Lifeguard
Tools can be downloaded from Western Digital's
web site at :

http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp

//Regards Soaplover