If Mobo not detecting 40 gb what r the possible solutions

A

Amit

Hello

I have a PII which is not detecting a 40 gig disk

My BIOS details are -
Award Modular Bios v4.51 PG
Award Software
2a69kpck TL -ZX21 1MBMX
7/29/99

Motherboard mfr is Pine

I have figured out the following solutions
1. Upgrade the bios - my mobo mfr is not really too keen to support,
their website doesnt give any specific updates.
2. Use a DDO - going through the other posts on groups, I find that
many people feel DDO is risky as once installed, it is quite difficult
to remove, if it crashes, then recovery is quite tough...I agree the
word 'quite' is not enough to justify not using this solution, but it
seems quite risky

Can you suggest what are the possible solutions. I

Thanks.
 
M

MrGrumpy

Check the hd connections, set to slave etc. Try new ide cable.
I've used that bios without problems
 
K

kony

Hello

I have a PII which is not detecting a 40 gig disk

My BIOS details are -
Award Modular Bios v4.51 PG
Award Software
2a69kpck TL -ZX21 1MBMX
7/29/99

Motherboard mfr is Pine

I have figured out the following solutions
1. Upgrade the bios - my mobo mfr is not really too keen to support,
their website doesnt give any specific updates.
2. Use a DDO - going through the other posts on groups, I find that
many people feel DDO is risky as once installed, it is quite difficult
to remove, if it crashes, then recovery is quite tough...I agree the
word 'quite' is not enough to justify not using this solution, but it
seems quite risky

Can you suggest what are the possible solutions. I
Click to expand...

The best solution is an ATA133, PCI IDE controller card.
They can be had from various 'sites for about $16 delivered,
or a little more for the top name-brands (but even the
cheaper ones usually work fine for your use). If you are
running WinNT/2K/XP, install the card first and the driver,
you'd likely not be able to boot an NT OS by merely moving
the OS drive to it initially.

It will support drives over 120GB in size AND provide higher
performance from a higher ATA rate than the mere ATA33 your
board probably uses... some boards of that era were up to
ATA66 but most weren't, and the "ZX" in your bios string
suggests it does only support ATA33, not ATA66 or higher.
 
M

MF

----- Original Message -----
From: "Amit" <[email protected]>
Newsgroups: alt.comp.hardware
Sent: Sunday, October 23, 2005 8:02 AM
Subject: If Mobo not detecting 40 gb what r the possible solutions

Hello

I have a PII which is not detecting a 40 gig disk

My BIOS details are -
Award Modular Bios v4.51 PG
Award Software
2a69kpck TL -ZX21 1MBMX
7/29/99

Motherboard mfr is Pine

I have figured out the following solutions
1. Upgrade the bios - my mobo mfr is not really too keen to support,
their website doesnt give any specific updates.
2. Use a DDO - going through the other posts on groups, I find that
many people feel DDO is risky as once installed, it is quite difficult
to remove, if it crashes, then recovery is quite tough...I agree the
word 'quite' is not enough to justify not using this solution, but it
seems quite risky

Can you suggest what are the possible solutions. I

Thanks.
Click to expand...

The bios is your problem. It will not recognize a drive larger than 32
gigs. Flat won't see it. The solution kony suggested is the best.
Otherwise, check the drive mfgr's website for ways to limit the drive's
capacity. A lot 40 gig drives had a jumper pair that would do this, because
of the widespread notoriety of that lousy BIOS's problem. When set, it
makes the drive report a smaller size to BIOS, then that size becomes the
usable space on your dirive: what you have to partition, format and use.
(You could live without 6 gigs; the drive is only around 38.14697265625 gigs
anyway.) Or you could use the mfgr's drive overlay software. Personally,
I'd rather give away six gigs than use overlay software, but others seem to
like it. But again, the separate IDE controller card is your best choice.

Mike
 
A

Amit

Thanks MrGrumpy and Kony for your replies.
I've used that bios without problems
Click to expand...

Although one may have used the same bios, the mobo may be having
limitations. but it is still worth a try.

As for the PCI card, I asked some service centres here and they were of
the opinion that PCI cards are useful if the onboard IDE is damaged,
and are not a solution if the mobo is not supporting a larger disc. I
am confused at this point. I would certainly like to go in for the
card.
 
K

kony

Thanks MrGrumpy and Kony for your replies.


Although one may have used the same bios, the mobo may be having
limitations. but it is still worth a try.

As for the PCI card, I asked some service centres here and they were of
the opinion that PCI cards are useful if the onboard IDE is damaged,
and are not a solution if the mobo is not supporting a larger disc. I
am confused at this point. I would certainly like to go in for the
card.
Click to expand...

Beware of that service center(s) then, it is a time tested
and solid solution. I hate to make blanket statements but
anyone who told you that wouldn't work is not adequately
trained to know, nor has ever tried it, and should've simply
stated as much rather than guessing. On ANY board that
doesn't have support for larger discs (it is not subject to
which board or board bios or anything of this nature), it
will always work to support larger drives.

The remaining issue is whether the motherboard in question
is able to boot off of drives connected to the controller
card, as it is a function of the motherboard bios to
consider add-on cards for this. The vast majority of boards
do this fine, it would be noteworthy if a board didn't. You
might even see a setting for add-on, or SCSI, or a different
wording in your bios that allows setting the priority to
consider the add-on card vs the onboard controller.

The card must have an onboard EEPROM, bios, to support
large drives. Practically any modern card does. If you
have questions about any particular card then link to a good
picture of it as it is fairly easy to tell if it has the
bios onboard.

It needs be ATA133, "Maybe" ATA100 but in some cases ATA100
only supported up to 128GB, which is enough for your present
need but an unnecessary limitation given the presence of
more modern ATA133 cards in the market. Some ATA100 also
have bios updates to increase their capacity support and
would even natively support the 40GB drive, but they are
little if any cheaper than ATA133 cards so there is no
reason to use an ATA100 card unless you happened to have it
already.

I had overlooked MF's suggestion of using the drive's
capacity limit jumper. That is a reasonable option since it
is only a 40GB drive and you'd only lose around 6GB., but
with the typical 40GB drive being able to exceed (the
roughly 29MB/s actual throughput available from ATA33) in
sustained transfer rate in some instances, let alone burst
rate, the PCI card would offer a little higher performance.
 
H

hardware

Thanks for taking out time to respond in such detail. I am feeling
quite confident and would go in for the card. I will let you guys know
what happened.

Thanks a ton

Amit
 
A

Ardent

X-No-Archive: yes

I am feeling
quite confident and would go in for the card.
Click to expand...

If you get the card make sure it is Promise as it is the only card
that is recognized by most motherboards. I have tried other cards
which my motherboards sadly did not recognize and they are lying here
some place unable to be used. That is why I went the BIOS way - here
again only Award BIOS can be modified - there is not much info
available on AMIBIOS.

HTH
 
K

kony

X-No-Archive: yes



If you get the card make sure it is Promise as it is the only card
that is recognized by most motherboards. I have tried other cards
which my motherboards sadly did not recognize and they are lying here
some place unable to be used. That is why I went the BIOS way - here
again only Award BIOS can be modified - there is not much info
available on AMIBIOS.
Click to expand...


Sometimes boards will have incompatibilities, not
necessarily IDE controller cards but a NIC or whatever.
I've tried random combinations of (IDE) cards with many
boards and usually they do work, I tend to disagree that a
Promise card is necessarily any more likely to succeed.
 
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