HD size limitation?

[gmatov]

Glock,

You are really not helping, here. You want to low level format, or somesuch, a brand new drive, one which Skorch seems to think has been written a bunch of gigs to, just by installing in the 98 machine.

Absolutely impossible. And some of these!!!!!!!

He is reading my words, but jusr using half of them.

There is no such thing, today, as a low level format. Can't be did. EIDE. Enhanced Integrated Device Electronics. The whole shmeer is in the control module screwed to the drive.

Cheers,

George

edit: He can't format the f'in thing, where the hell would he have an MBR?

I appreciate your input, but think, man, if the drive has never been installed, the prob is a little more than a bad MBR. Like, never properly installed?

[Chief Wiggum]

Since it is a pretty recent motherboard, you have the latest bios installed and the bios recognises the disc with the correct label; i don't think it is a motherboard issue.

I doubt its a jumper issue. As it is the only device, if its in wrong the drive would not boot up. You'd get something like please insert bootable disc.

Scorch, Is the disc formatted ntsc or fats32 ( i don't know if winxp runs on fats32). Did you have windows 98 on this before? If you've removed all partitions then the hard disk is in effect like a blank floppy disc. Just like that disc if you try to boot from it nothing will happen. You need to reformat it e.g. put in your OS cd and reboot your system. You will then have a fresh install.

Gmatov,
My drive cost a bit more than that. I am in the Uk though. I got a WD SE version. They cost a little more but i've never had issues with them. Unlike the IBM deskstar i used to have which made lovely grinding noises and had a load of bad sectors.

[glockjs]

Glock,

You are really not helping, here. You want to low level format, or somesuch, a brand new drive, one which Skorch seems to think has been written a bunch of gigs to, just by installing in the 98 machine.

Absolutely impossible. And some of these!!!!!!!

He is reading my words, but jusr using half of them.

There is no such thing, today, as a low level format. Can't be did. EIDE. Enhanced Integrated Device Electronics. The whole shmeer is in the control module screwed to the drive.

Cheers,

George

edit: He can't format the f'in thing, where the hell would he have an MBR?

I appreciate your input, but think, man, if the drive has never been installed, the prob is a little more than a bad MBR. Like, never properly installed?

i asked if it was a new drive or not and never got an answer...if it was used b4 thats the route he need to go. it's kind weird that it keeps happening over and over. there's gotta be something else to it than just a simple formatting is all im tryin to point out

[stiltman]

Well this board will definately support an 80gb drive
Two Serial ATA IDE interfaces with RAID 0 and RAID 1 support
Two Parallel ATA IDE interfaces with UDMA 33, ATA-66/100 support
http://www.intel.com/design/motherbd/rl/

Does the BIOS see it as a 80gb drive or 32gb drive? regardless of serial number.
Have you tried another HDD?

Have you tried fdisk/mbr ?

Sorry if these have already been covered

[gmatov]

Give him a little time.

My last "Instructional" post may have been read a little more thoroughly.

Prior replies had him fdisking then trying to install. You have to format after fdisk.

Without format, it's like a huge tablet without page numbers. If the OS Install can't write to a numbered page, it's going to just say no.

I think we'll hear of a success soon.

Cheers,

George

[jimmalenko]

If using/trying to install XP, why f**k around with fdisk ? That tool's usefulness expired looong ago IMO. I only use it when absolutely necessary - ie. installing win98.

I'm with glock here

As mentioned, XP by default comes with 137GB HD
support, and it wasn't until SP1 that this is fixed. So there shouldn't be any issues with an 80GB drive. Have we even confirmed that it is an 80GB drive ??? Take the hard drive out of the box - most say on them now what their capacity in GBs is.

Process of elimination here: If the hard drive is truly 80GB, and there's nothing wrong with the hard drive, and there's definitely nothing wrong with the OS, what are you left with ?

mobo bios.

[glockjs]

i was kinda confused on that....is it win 98 or xp? win98 use fdisk, but with xp you dont need to. it might save alot of time if he sticks another drive in there and see what it recognizes or doesnt. if the computer is already open it takes like 2 secs to swap. like jim said process of elimination. and im the type to take care of the things that take the least amount of time first...but thats just me

[gmatov]

And then, too, when the drive was in the 98 machine, and that, with the old fdisk, would not see the full drive capacity, Skorch may have installed the WD setup program.

If he did, I don't think the drive is accessible to a machine without it.

Drive will have to go back in that machine, CD run, and choose "Uninstall Data Lifeguard". After you have done that, you might as well fdisk from that machine, partition and format, before you install to the new one.

Data Lifeguard and Maxblast, Maxtor's drive utility, write their own parameters to the drive.

I have had that problem, ONCE, and when I began the Warranty return, the WD tech told me it was unreadable to a machine without DLG on it. Lost a shitload of files.

Never used any of those programs again.

Yes, the fdisk date is 5/18/2000, not 5/8/2000. Too much stuff to keep in my head. Should delete some.

Cheers,

George

[skorch]

Okay, sorry about the confusion.

I'll try to describe what I've done as clearly as I can, the new machine had XP Pro v 5.1 w/ SP2, HD showing about 32 gigs, one partition C drive, NTFS.
1. Went to MS and d/l the 263044usa8.exe file to my Win98SE machine.
2. Ran the exe file and rebooted Win98SE.
3. Created a new Win98 starup floppy.
4. Right clicked and navigated to the FDISK.exe file on the floppy, it was dated 5/18/2000 NOT 5/08/2000.
5. Inserted floppy into new machine and set it to boot to floppy.
6. Set program to boot without CD Rom support.
7. Windows 98 has detected that drive C doesn't contain any FAT or FAT32 partitions and lists 3 possible causes: 1. drive may need to be partitioned by running FDISK 2. 3rd party partitioning software 3. virus has caused C not to rgister, run Virus scan.
8. At the A:/ prompt, typed fdisk and hit enter.
9. Message telling me I have a disk larger than 512 MB and this version of Windows supports drives over 2 GB to be formatted as a single drive. Then it reads Important: If you enable large disk support and create any new drives on this disk, you will not be able to access the new drive(s) using other OS'. In addition disk utilities that were not designed explicitly for FAT32 will not be able to work with this disk. If you need to access this disk with other OS' or older disk utilities, do not enable large drive support.
Do you wish to enable large drive support (Y/N)?
I selected Y and hit enter.
10. Next screen reads: your computer has NTFS partitions which may require large drive support. If you are using another OS, such as Win NT, you should enable treating these partitions as large. NOTE: if you answer Y and the partition display looks incorrect or a hang or crash occurs do nothing, run FDISK again, and answer N to this question.
Should NTFS partitions on all drives be treated as large (Y/N)? Selected Y
11. Next screen reads: current fixed disk drive: 1, then it gives me 4 choices not a 5th as you instructed earlier gmatov. 1. create DOS partition or logical DOS drive 2. set active partition 3. delete partiton or logical DOS drive 4. display partition info
12. After choosing 4 and hitting enter it reads: partition-1, status-A, type-NTFS, volume lable-(blank), usage-100%
total disk space is 32248 mbytes (1 mbyte=1048576 bytes)
13. I deleted this partition and rebooted and ran FDISK again, created a primary partiton at 6 GB as you suggested.
14. I then hit ESC and selected Option 2, create extended DOS partition, and here's where the problem is. I typed in 70000 and it tells me requested partiton size exceeds the maximum available space, which I suspected would happen since it said I only had 32248 total.

Glock, sorry for not responding to the question of the HD being used in the old machine. The truth is I'm pretty sure I didn't because I had tried to use Data Lifeguard (a dynamic drive overlay) on it and accidently applied it to the boot drive in the old machine. As a result I overwrote the MBR in my 20 GB boot and hade to reinstall Win 98, a hard lesson in the value of backing up data.
I suppose I'll have to invest in PM8 which with prices on HDs dropping will come in handy.

Sorry for the long post and again, thanks to you all.

[stiltman]

what size does the HDD show up as in the BIOS?
What size is written on the HDD label?

[tekkieman]

what size does the HDD show up as in the BIOS?
What size is written on the HDD label?

I agree. Let's get to the very basics. What does the BIOS see? Based on the model number he gave, I would suggest manually configuring the drive jumper to single drive by removing the jumper from wherever it is, and placing it on pins 4 and 6. Stick that sucker in the new machine and turn it on. Go into BIOS, and see what it says. If we're not happy with what it says, manually configure it as such (from the WD website for this model drive):

Set the system BIOS to auto detect the drive with LBA mode enabled. Older systems may hang or freeze while auto detecting large capacity drives. If this situation occurs, set the drive to User and enter 1023 for Cylinders, 16 for Heads, 63 for Sectors, and disable LBA mode. Your BIOS may have more settings than Cylinders, Heads, and Sectors; if so, simply enter 0 for them.

Reboot. Check BIOS again. If it sees the entire drive, configure to boot from CD, and let XP handle it from there. If it still doesn't see the full drive, throw it away!

[stiltman]

If it still doesn't see the full drive, throw it away!

Unless of course it was only a 40gb drive to begin with

[tekkieman]

If it still doesn't see the full drive, throw it away!

Unless of course it was only a 40gb drive to begin with

I've made this mistake before, but I will start by giving the benefit of the doubt that the OP is capable of reading the label. If so, the drive is listed as a WD Caviar SE. Now, who the hell knows what the SE is really about, but we can talk about that DataLife crap some other time....

In the meantime, WHAT DOES THE BIOS SAY?!?!?!?!

[glockjs]

If it still doesn't see the full drive, throw it away!

Unless of course it was only a 40gb drive to begin with

but a 40gb would show up as 37gb. unless fat32 is takin up 5gb for the os thats the only reason that it would be down to 32gb. but it's kinda weird that its showing 32gb cause that one of the trouble sign ranges

[skorch]

Guys,
physically on the drive itself it reads as a WD800, with 80GB.

In the BIOS it shows up as 33.8GB.
Configuration options selected by BIOS:
LBA mode: supported
Block mode: 16 sectors
PIO mode: mode 4
Ultra DMA: mode 5
Cable detected: 80 conductor

[tekkieman]

If it still doesn't see the full drive, throw it away!

Unless of course it was only a 40gb drive to begin with

but a 40gb would show up as 37gb. unless fat32 is takin up 5gb for the os thats the only reason that it would be down to 32gb. but it's kinda weird that its showing 32gb cause that one of the trouble sign ranges

Ok, let's have pointless discussions while we wait for the bios info. glock - I agree about the trouble range statement, but if we believe the OP, there is only one partition on it, and it's ntfs.

What else can we talk about while we wait (impatiently) for the bios info?

[glockjs]

[glockjs]

but i had it before where bios showed the wrong size. i did a /fix mbr(or whatever the command is) then i had to do a low level format to fix it. cause if the drive thinks it is only so big there is no partition to delete or make thats gonna fix it.

[skorch]

Just to add to the last post, I already had the jumper set on 4 and 6, which is what the WD website recommends, however the drive itself reads to remove the jumper.
After removing it (no jumper) and rebooting to BIOS it reads the same.

[glockjs]

And then, too, when the drive was in the 98 machine, and that, with the old fdisk, would not see the full drive capacity, Skorch may have installed the WD setup program.

If he did, I don't think the drive is accessible to a machine without it.

Drive will have to go back in that machine, CD run, and choose "Uninstall Data Lifeguard". After you have done that, you might as well fdisk from that machine, partition and format, before you install to the new one.

Data Lifeguard and Maxblast, Maxtor's drive utility, write their own parameters to the drive.

I have had that problem, ONCE, and when I began the Warranty return, the WD tech told me it was unreadable to a machine without DLG on it. Lost a shitload of files.

Never used any of those programs again.

Yes, the fdisk date is 5/18/2000, not 5/8/2000. Too much stuff to keep in my head. Should delete some.

Cheers,

George

just wanted to add i can see how this could be a prob too, never had it happen but i can definately see how it is a possibility

[stiltman]

Guys,
physically on the drive itself it reads as a WD800, with 80GB.

In the BIOS it shows up as 33.8GB.
Configuration options selected by BIOS:
LBA mode: supported
Block mode: 16 sectors
PIO mode: mode 4
Ultra DMA: mode 5
Cable detected: 80 conductor

What does it show up as if you put it on the secondary ide controller?
Also make sure you have the jumper set to master. then test on ide controler by itself

[ViRaL1]

Out on a limb here. Do you know someone who has either an NT, 2k or XP machine that can simply mount and quick format the drive for you? If so, try that (after checking the drive size in THEIR BIOS), then put it back in your system and see if it reads as 80ish.

[skorch]

stiltman, tried that one out, same result.

ViRaL1, yes but it will have to wait until the weekend unfortunately.

So I'm guessing even if I go out and get PM8, that might not fix the problem?
Anyone know if Newegg would be willing to exchange the drive for a new one?

[glockjs]

is there any data worth saving on this drive at this point?

[skorch]

Nope nothing at all, I'm ready to chuck it at the wall at this point to be honest.

[ViRaL1]

Mail it to me? I'll even pay shipping.

[glockjs]

ok try one thing for me. stick the winxp disk in. then:

3. At the Welcome to Setup page, press ENTER.
4. Press F8 to accept the Windows XP Licensing Agreement.
5. If an existing Windows XP installation is detected, you are prompted to repair it. To bypass the repair, press ESC.


what does it show?

[glockjs]

Mail it to me? I'll even pay shipping.

NO, ill take it truth is hdd's are hard to kill

[stiltman]

stiltman, tried that one out, same result.

Did you check it with the WD tools?
http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp?swid=1

[gmatov]

Skorch,

When your 98 machine boots, does it boot from HD0 or does it boot from EZDrive? Bottom of the second DOS screen, after it lists your drives.

If you ran the Data Lifeguard disk, back then, and screwed your machine up, so you had to reinstall, it's an indicator that you do, in fact have EZDrive installed.

I hesitate to suggest putting it back in the 98 machine and uninstalling EZDrive, as your present C:\ drive might be unreadable.

That's the only thing I can see as your problem, if you have done all the above.

What does the 98 machine see if you install the drive into it? Slave it to the Master on the middle ribbon connector.

You might search or browse the c drive to see if EZDrive is installed, also.

Sorry,

George