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Older PC Not Recognising New HDD...

C

Citan

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 3, 2002
Messages
167
Trying to Install a new HDD in a Older Pacard Bell PC I'm Repairing, the HDD is a WD 40GB tht I've allready tested on another PC, & It works Fine.

But this Pacard Bell Wont Recognise the bloody thing, and I can't figure out what the problem is, It's obviously not OS Related since the Drive is Blank, so it has to be the BIOS somehow.

Any Ideas Guys? :confused:
 
First thing is to check your jumpers and make sure it's forced to master or slave, a lot of older PCs don't like cable select.

Second, understand that this problem you're encountering is dependent on what the age of the box is. Over the years there were numerous times that BIOSes and ATA modes ran out of address space while trying to handle bigger drives. These limits have occurred at 528MB, 2GB, 3GB, 8GB, 32GB, and 137GB. Chances are this machine is new enough to bump its head at the 2GB, 8GB, or 32GB limit, but which I cannot tell you without knowing more than the manufacturer (the 3GB limit was in very few machines).

There are a couple solutions dependening on what works for your particular system. Some machines still have BIOS updates available to eliminate these addressing restrictions, try searching for one first. You may get lucky and find a BIOS on some old salt's website. Second, many drives have a "__GB clip" jumper, usually either 2GB clip or 8GB clip. This tells the drive to report itself as that size. It will work, but then you lose access to the other areas of the drive.

Note - for everything below here, disable autodetect disk in the BIOS.

The third solution I've used is really a workaround, go into the BIOS and manually enter the drive geometry (it should be on a sticker on the drive). If it doesn't work, keep trying stuff until it sees as much of the drive as you can get it to (LBA and some BS settings usually work). This will get the BIOS to see the drive, though probably it will say it's a 2-8GB HDD. Don't worry about it, just install the OS, since any modern OS will use their own system calls to address the drive they will see and access the entire drive. The only catch is that the OS must be installed on the first 2GB of the drive (if it sees it as 2GB), otherwise the bootloader will be too far off for the BIOS to use. You could also use a floppy or CD-based bootloader if required.

Lastly, you could use software that essentially does the above workaround for you. Most drive manufacturers provide utilities that run at boot time, provide fake settings to teh bios, and do what I outlined above, translating the calls and allow access to the whole drive. This is particularly useful if you use older OSes.
 
Ok, Pulled a 2GB out of an Old PC of mine & tried that, & it Worked fine.
So it's Definatly a Size Restriction.
 
The spec sheet for the board indicates it supports ATA66 drives, which should include 40GB drives and everything under 137GB. You may want to update the chipset drives from Intel.

Otherwise, I'd suggest investigating the solutions Snugglebear suggested or examining the BIOS or manual for hints. You might also want to email Gigabyte about it, or look through their knowledgebase.
 
there is very likely a workaround in that case
Snugglebear outlined them very well, but a few more resources



http://www.plasma-online.de/english/upgrade/tweak/fixes/fix_harddisk_bios.html
(embedded links)
hardware fixes

Use of large harddisks in PC's with BIOS size limit

There are certain limitations why you could not use the full capacity of your harddisk right from the beginning.
Case 1
Your mainboard BIOS lacks support for large harddisks (540MB / 2GB / 8GB / 16GB / 32GB limit). This is when your harddisk is reported as unsupported [AutoDetect reports None] or with wrong sizes in the BIOS setup. Even when your computer stops starting.
Case 2
Your harddisk features an UltraDMA mode not known to the harddisk or vice versa. Therefore no communication can be established.
Case 3
Your operating system does not support partitions larger than 2GB.

For all limitations workarounds exist.


Case 1
Solution 1
Your mainboard manufacturer may provide a new BIOS binary for download to update your current version with a Flash utility. To identify your mainboard at least a manufacturer name and product name or a BIOS ID is needed.
Info on how to find the BIOS ID and manufacturer

Solution 2
If you use an operating system like Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, Linux, MacOS... you can manually enter harddisk data in the BIOS to limit your HD to 2GB. This will prevent your BIOS from autodetecting your harddisk and will limit BIOS access to your harddisk to the first 2GB. During boot-up your BIOS will report this "wrong" size. This is only important up the point when the BIOS hands over control to your operating system (e.g. Windows 95 IO.SYS / COMMAND.COM). Then your operating system uses it's own method to access the harddisk and is indepented from your BIOS limitations. Creating partitions is more difficult when using this solution as FDISK does rely on proper initialization of your harddisk during boot up.
You can download a partition tool to create partitions with every size and file system you like here:
Ultimate Boot CD > Ransih Partition Manager
FAQ for solving problems or questions:
http://www.ranish.com/part/

Solution 3
Some harddisks provide a jumper to limit harddisk size visible to your BIOS to 2GB (sometimes 8GB or 32GB). That would be easier than the above given solution to enter manually data into BIOS settings.

Solution 4
Most harddisk manufacturers provide a software tool to do both parts (using fake settings for the BIOS and translating harddisk size correctly to its full capacity). Please specify your harddisk type to guide you to a download location. This solution works with legacy operating systems, too.
Fujitsu DiskManager
IBM DiskManager 2000 (v 3.10.14)
Seagate DiscWizard 2000
Full version for all harddisks by OnTrack (59.95$)


Case 2
Change UDMA mode for your harddisk. As your chipset is based on VIA 82C586B southbridge all modes above UDMA33 are useless, because this chipset can only handle up to UDMA33. So limiting your harddisks firmware to UDMA66 or UDMA33 does NOT decrease performance. Problem could be that your harddisk can't get initialized as it features an UDMA mode unknown to the BIOS / chipset.
Fujitsu UDMA changer

Case 3
Microsoft DOS based operating systems like Windows 3.1, Windows 95 implement a file system called FAT16. This file system can only handle partitions up to 2GB:
65525 cluster (max) * 32768 Byte (max) = 2.147.123.200Byte
So you would end up with 10 partitions with 2GB each when using a 20GB disk. Newer releases of Microsoft Windows like Windows 95 OSR 2, Windows 98 and later use a new file system called FAT32 which can have partitions larger than 2GB. Windows 95 and Windows 95 SP1 don't feature FAT32 (see Properties of MyComputer for version of Windows95 -> 950 or 950A have no FAT32). All in all you can use harddisks with 20GB in your PC but you might end up with ten partitions named C:, D:, E: ... all with 2GB each. If this is OK for you no further activities are necessary. If you want to use one partition with more than 2GB upgrade to an operating system with support for different file systems like FAT32 (Windows95 SP2, Windows98/ME, Windows 2000), NTFS (Windows NT, Windows 2000), HPFS (MacOS), extFS (Linux) etc.
Click to expand...

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/bios/index.htm
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/bios/size.htm
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/bios/over.htm

the easiest solution would be an old IDE controller card
 
I'm using the same board (uATX right?).. Same problem, my 40gb wouldn't detect so i just used a PCI controller card..
 
Yes , thats the easiest way to aproach it. A PCI ide controller card will resolve it
 
Ok, After hell on earth trying to get a Non-RAID IDE Controller The PC is now Recognising the HDD.
BUT! Windows XP Setup Refuses to Recognise it despite going through the hasstle of installing the Driver.

Any suguestions???
I'm about ready to throw this hunk of excrement into the nearest lake....
 
When using a 3rd party controller you will need to press F6 (XP intialy prompts you to hit F6 for third parry controllers if you have them) when you are installing XP then when prompted place the driver floppy that accompaies the controller in the A drive and bang follo wthe directions

If your controller only came with a cd rom there, explore the disc on another machine and look for a create a disc folder wtha utiliy executable itt then double click it with a blank floppy in the machine your using to explore the disc. The exe will create a floppy for use on XP installations
 
also need to set the boot order to SCSI first
(IDE PCI card controllers using SCSI Drivers)
and the Card needs to be high enough in the PIRQ routing order to boot first
(probably not applicable, unless there are other storage controller cards)
 
Just remember that computer repair runs $50/hr. Somewhere along the line, it's cheaper & easier to replace the system. Trying to get crusty old hardware to play with newer hardware is full of problems.
 
OK your able to boot to a different drive but cant get the 40GB HDD recognized in disk management?

did you format it in another machine 1st (you should need to)
Im at a bit of a loss since Im not overly familiar with old Packard Bell BIOS
 
I just used my Promise TX2 ATA 100 controller and windows and everything set up without a hitch? Sad times to see you're having that many problems
 
well thats what "should" be happening :p
but obviously isnt and Im thinking about why it possibly isnt, and ccome back to the Packard Bell part I havent a clue about
 
If you ask me I suspect this POS has been purposly fixed to prevent upgrades over a certan level....
 
manufacturers can excercise considerable control via the BIOS
generally speaking its done for a good reason like disabling a certain option
(not being able to turn off ACPI, or idle commands for the CPU to the chipset)

but limiting a HDD, well there shouldnt be a maximum size to a SCSI chain, JBOD or RAID array controllable via the BIOS, and that is effectively what an IDE Controller or RAID card does even back when that thing was made you should have been able to attach 10 or so SCSI HDD if you really felt like it
 
Update, Installed Windos to an ancent 2GB (which is all it will detect) and it worked fine, but Windows will not recognise the 40GB no matter what I try... :mad:
 
This is pretty bizarre. The only things I can think of are to try and update the bios if you haven't already and to try an alternate PCI controller. My folks both use PCs several years older than yours and are running 40GB drives quite happily, albeit both required bios updates to do so without drama. And here I thought you had an original PB P60 like an old friend of mine had.
 
not sure there is a BIOS update, but I'll have a Look & if there is I'll give it a try.
 
Hello Citan,

What you may have is an NEC Packard Bell. But IIRC NEC no longer sells PCs under the Packard Bell brand name here in the US; in fact, NEC no longer sells retail home PCs in North America. So, you may not have any technical support at all whatsoever.

Oh, wait... NEC still sells Packard Bell-branded PCs in Europe and in parts of Asia. And Packard Bell's European site still has BIOS updates for your Club 60 PC.
But your GA6WMM7 motherboard came with a BIOS version that suffers from the 33.8GB capacity limitation that's typical of Award BIOSes dated prior to 15 October 1999.

Your GA6WMM7 motherboard uses the "Houston" BIOS. You can download either the 3.0W or the 3.0Y BIOS version here, from their UK site.
Both of those BIOS were released back in the year 2001. As such, neither of those BIOSes have 48-bit LBA addressing support, so you're limited to 137GB maximum hard drive size support.
 
but why wouldnt the PCI card work?
Its using SCSI drivers and there would be no limits (other than OS)

thats what is twistin my brain :p
like Snugglebear pointed out I guess they just dont want to play well together

nice find E4g1e

we'll need to start refering to you as E4g1e eye :p
 
Yeah, the PCI card would address the entire drive if it would stop fighting with the onboard bios. Who knows, maybe you'll have to disable the onboard IDE controllers to get the PCI controller to work properly.
 
or some twisted little wierd BIOS feature
you dont thing they made it so it cant run SCSI do you?

of course not, it was in the boot order :rolleyes:
not thinkin clearly here
 
"Tried" to Flash the BIOS all day, never worked, Guess Why..

The F****ng thing is Write Protected, and the Feature to Un-Write Protect it has been Removed!!! :mad: :mad: :mad:
nuke.gif
 
If I had any explosives id put this pice of crap into orbit just for the agrivation!
 
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