Medion hard drive

[JnJ]

A Medion laptop (four years old) will not see the full 40 gbs Hitachi
hard drive just installed. It sees 8gb only. There is no bios update
available from Medion and Hitachi can offer no help. Am I stuffed?

 

[Andy Foster]

A Medion laptop (four years old) will not see the full 40 gbs Hitachi
hard drive just installed. It sees 8gb only. There is no bios update
available from Medion and Hitachi can offer no help. Am I stuffed?

Is it the BIOS or FDISK that's reporting 8GB?
If it's FDISK, don't worry about it, and partition by % rather than by MB.

 

[DaveW]

Sorry

 

[VWWall]

A Medion laptop (four years old) will not see the full 40 gbs Hitachi
hard drive just installed. It sees 8gb only. There is no bios update
available from Medion and Hitachi can offer no help. Am I stuffed?

Most drive makers offer a BIOS overlay for this purpose. (EZBios is one;
I don't know what Hitachi calls theirs, but I'd bet they have one!)

This replaces the original MBR with one which directs the boot-up to a
new BIOS, usually in sectors 3-17. After loading the BIOS, it reverts to
the original MBR, which may have been copied to sector 2. I don't
usually advise using this kind of set-up, but if there is no BIOS
up-grade available, it's one way to use a larger drive.

Check again with Hitachi.

Virg Wall

 

[JnJ]

Is it the BIOS or FDISK that's reporting 8GB?
If it's FDISK, don't worry about it, and partition by % rather than by MB.

Both.

 

[JnJ]

Most drive makers offer a BIOS overlay for this purpose. (EZBios is one;
I don't know what Hitachi calls theirs, but I'd bet they have one!)

Check again with Hitachi.

Virg Wall

Good idea. It was my first idea but Hitachi do not offer a DDO solution!
Have heard this from their technical support via email. Searching Google
for a legacy copy of the old Overlay utility has so far proved
fruitless.

 

[Ron Cook]

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A Medion laptop (four years old) will not see the full 40 gbs Hitachi
hard drive just installed. It sees 8gb only. There is no bios update
available from Medion and Hitachi can offer no help. Am I stuffed?

You might consider the DiskManager DDO software from OnTrack:

< http://buyonline.ontrack.com/ecom/catalog.asp?cookie_test=1 >

I've used older versions in the past and had excellent results.
It is sold at US $59.95.

Another option might be to try a Linux distribution on your laptop.

- --
Ron n1zhi
(e-mail address removed)
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[JnJ]

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You might consider the DiskManager DDO software from OnTrack:

Another option might be to try a Linux distribution on your laptop.

- --
Ron n1zhi

Thanks for all that. The laptop is probably not worth the $56 for the
Ontrack ODD Manager! Would a Linux OS (I have mandrake and Suse to hand)
recognise the full capacity?

 

[kony]

Thanks for all that. The laptop is probably not worth the $56 for the
Ontrack ODD Manager! Would a Linux OS (I have mandrake and Suse to hand)
recognise the full capacity?

Huh?
Go to the HDD manufacturer's website, practically all of
them offer a utilities/installation floppy that has "free"
DDO installation option, probably the same Ontrack DDO.