Installed New 250gb WD HD and it does not see it.

[WILDcorp]

I set this up as slave. Made other HD Master w/ slave. Bios shows it just
fine. Does not show up in My Computer. Does show up in Disk management but as
unreadable. Have no choices but properties when I right click on it. I can
rescan then have ability to Initialize but it too fails. Shows as 250g drive
and unreadable. Used the Western Digital utility to check the drive out and
it is fine. Anyone know how to fix this? Oh and the Utility said that the OS
was reading it as 137gb.

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, WILDcorp.

Oh and the Utility said that the OS
was reading it as 137gb.

Bingo! Sounds like you need a BIOS upgrade so that your computer will
support 48-bit addressing for hard drives.

What is the make and model of your computer - or of your motherboard if you
built it yourself? What is the date on your BIOS - probably on the very
first (usually white text on black screen) page that you see when you
power-on your computer? The Pause/Break key SHOULD (but doesn't on some
models) work at this point to freeze the screen so that you can read the
bottom line of this first page. Post that line of text here and we should
be able to tell you where to find more info. Usually the first few
characters are the date of your BIOS and the rest of the line are codes for
the specific version.

Most computers built in the past 5 years or so have supported 48-bit
addressing on hard drives, which is necessary for them to be able to address
more than about 137 GB. For larger drives, you need an updated BIOS.

This KB article is for WinXP, but it should explain the situation and the
hardware limitation:
How to enable 48-bit Logical Block Addressing support for ATAPI disk drives
in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/303013

This article also may help:
48-bit LBA Technology
http://www.48bitlba.com/

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail 2008 in Vista Ultimate x64)

 

[WILDcorp]

I am at work right now and will get back to youo on the date of my bios. But
I have a Shuttle AN35N Ultra nForce2 motherboard. It has not been updated in
some time. I did build it myself about 5 years ago.

 

[WILDcorp]

My bios is from 2003.

Hi, WILDcorp.


Bingo! Sounds like you need a BIOS upgrade so that your computer will
support 48-bit addressing for hard drives.

What is the make and model of your computer - or of your motherboard if you
built it yourself? What is the date on your BIOS - probably on the very
first (usually white text on black screen) page that you see when you
power-on your computer? The Pause/Break key SHOULD (but doesn't on some
models) work at this point to freeze the screen so that you can read the
bottom line of this first page. Post that line of text here and we should
be able to tell you where to find more info. Usually the first few
characters are the date of your BIOS and the rest of the line are codes for
the specific version.

Most computers built in the past 5 years or so have supported 48-bit
addressing on hard drives, which is necessary for them to be able to address
more than about 137 GB. For larger drives, you need an updated BIOS.

This KB article is for WinXP, but it should explain the situation and the
hardware limitation:
How to enable 48-bit Logical Block Addressing support for ATAPI disk drives
in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/303013

This article also may help:
48-bit LBA Technology
http://www.48bitlba.com/

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail 2008 in Vista Ultimate x64)

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, WILDcorp.

My bios is from 2003.

That puts it into the "suspect" timeframe.

Have you read either of the references I gave you?
RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail 2008 in Vista Ultimate x64)