Bios Recognisin' 16 from 80 gig HD(maxtor)

[Fred-C]

I have a rather old compaq deskpro, 647mhz intel processor running XP
(without any boot diskettes) , i have had a 10 gig hdd since i bought the
computer fer a tenner, a year ago, and i put a 4 gig slave drive in it. Now
i know these are small drives, but I have just bought an 80 gig maxtor hdd,
and when i insert it, in place of the slave, it is not recognised..altho, in
ctrl settings/system/ its THERE.. and when i ran my computer using it as the
master, (i was gonna install xp on the maxtor 80) it only found 16 of the 80
gig , something about the bios being old and ya have to run a maxtor app to
reclaim some more of the hdd.

Right...as i have no boot diskettes/disks , how do i get to even install
this hdd, as it does not give me the option to partition the disk, or
anything...BUT i also have 3 other hdd's all about 4-5 gig, and NONE of
them, when i used them as slave drives needed partitioning, or tell the
computer to make them a d: slave, (C: master) it just was! - no input needed
from me.

So if i take my master(10 gig) off the computer, there goes my o/s , i have
an installation disk (xp its worked on my 10gig fer months, not new, not
even orig.) so what shud be my 1st move, thats all i want to know, should i
keep with the making it a slave, and take the 16 if it is offered to me, and
hope that maxtor have a program/app that gives me some of the wasted memory,
?

Do I have to format the hdd(80)? how do i even create a bootable disk to
start the whole installation off? any help is good help at this point... my
bios is old , 1999, 686T2 , it seems shitty to have to take only 16gig out
of a brand new 80 gig hard disk?
what do you advise please? Thanks - Fred C -

 

[Paul]

I have a rather old compaq deskpro, 647mhz intel processor running XP
(without any boot diskettes) , i have had a 10 gig hdd since i bought the
computer fer a tenner, a year ago, and i put a 4 gig slave drive in it. Now
i know these are small drives, but I have just bought an 80 gig maxtor hdd,
and when i insert it, in place of the slave, it is not recognised..altho, in
ctrl settings/system/ its THERE.. and when i ran my computer using it as the
master, (i was gonna install xp on the maxtor 80) it only found 16 of the 80
gig , something about the bios being old and ya have to run a maxtor app to
reclaim some more of the hdd.

Right...as i have no boot diskettes/disks , how do i get to even install
this hdd, as it does not give me the option to partition the disk, or
anything...BUT i also have 3 other hdd's all about 4-5 gig, and NONE of
them, when i used them as slave drives needed partitioning, or tell the
computer to make them a d: slave, (C: master) it just was! - no input needed
from me.

So if i take my master(10 gig) off the computer, there goes my o/s , i have
an installation disk (xp its worked on my 10gig fer months, not new, not
even orig.) so what shud be my 1st move, thats all i want to know, should i
keep with the making it a slave, and take the 16 if it is offered to me, and
hope that maxtor have a program/app that gives me some of the wasted memory,
?

Do I have to format the hdd(80)? how do i even create a bootable disk to
start the whole installation off? any help is good help at this point... my
bios is old , 1999, 686T2 , it seems shitty to have to take only 16gig out
of a brand new 80 gig hard disk?
what do you advise please? Thanks - Fred C -

Does your computer have room for a PCI card ? This is the
card I would buy, as it will handle a large drive (and the
INT 0x13 service offered by the card's BIOS takes care of
handling the large disk). There are possibly cheaper cards
out there (say, based on a 0680 chip), but I don't know
if I'd want to try one of those or not.

PROMISE ULTRA133 TX2 PCI IDE Controller Card $35
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816102007

How you would use this is:

1) Leave the current boot drive where it is.
2) Shut down, unplug the comp, and install the TX2 card in a
PCI slot. Connect the new 80GB drive to the TX2. Set the disk
jumper as appropriate for the situation (cable select, master,
or slave).
3) Boot the OS. Download a driver from the Promise site. Install
the driver. You will likely be prompted to reboot. After
the reboot, you should be ready to format/partition etc.
4) You don't have to use the Maxtor utility at this point.
As I understand it, these utilities use a DDO, or drive
overlay, and while many tools understand and cah handle the
presence of a DDO, there are apparently situations where the
DDO can cause problems. Even though I haven't researched examples
of what these problems might be, I have avoided all use of
these disk drive company utilities. I always use the OS
formatter, if it will work.
5) If you want to install the OS to the drive connected to
the TX2 card, you will need to press F6 near the beginning of
the install, and present the Promise drivers for installation.
6) You can move the drive and controller card to another computer,
provided you install the drivers for the controller card into
the OS.

http://www.promise.com/support/download/download2_eng.asp?productId=87&category=driver&os=0&go=GO

Buying the card can do two things for you. It increases the size
of disk that can be handled. It will also support faster transfer
modes than the onboard controller. You should use an 80 wire/40 pin
IDE cable with a controller like this, to get the fastest DMA
rate possible. That is the cable that uses the "thinner" wires.

Depending on which OS you are using, you might also want to
read up on the quirks of FDISK. I thought some older versions
of FDISK, don't show the correct disk size when talking to
large disks. Have a look in Google or the Microsoft KB, as
my memory is foggy (perhaps 64GB was the magic number...).

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q263044

HTH,
Paul