R
Richard Keirle
Have spent most of the afternoon googling and web digging REALLY hard to get
some answers for a friend. A last resort, that perhaps really should have
been a major time-saving first resort, is to ask in this W98se NG that
obviously contains the finest micro-brains .......was that a contradiction
in terms...LOL...... (...here's hoping flattery will get me everywhere!)
These questions were raised by a lengthy 'phone conversation with a friend,
who's been allowing one of his friends to muck about with his computer. So,
I wasn't in front of the computer, and was in that position where one
suspects that fibs are being told, or at least one is being given incorrect
information and answers. (Boy oh boy, I could never work in PC telephone
support - SO FRUSTRATING and ANNOYING !! )
The scenario:-
Asus P5A SS7 mobo / AMD K6 500 - old non-pipelined cpu - (i think) based
machine with a nearly full up hard-disk - currently W98se / XPpro dual boot.
Not sure whether XP is sitting on Fat32 NTFS. (They couldn't answer that
question.)
They bought a new 80gb hd and tried to "Maxblast 3" the current hd onto the
new one. I did a some web digging and suspect that Maxblast 3 does not
support replicating/transferring a dual boot system onto a new hd. After
doing this, they said that when they try to boot with just the new 80gb hd
connected, they get a black screen. I did some more web digging and found
some stuff where people had done the same or similar thing, and it seems
that trying to use Maxblast 3 to replicate a dual boot system, it replicates
all drives from the original drive onto the new drive but, leaves the
original W98se boot partition without a mbr.
Then during the 'phone conversation, the friend of a friend said that the
bios on the P5A mobo will not recognize the 80gb hd at all ! i.e. implying
that it doesn't even recognize it as a 32gb hd for example, indicating a
bios inadequacy! Then it came to light that he had attached the 80gb hd to
a different machine in order to format it ! Then it came to light that they
had bought a pci/ide card and had been fiddling around with that as well !
After this confusing 'phone call, I did some web digging to try and find out
what the largest hd is, that the Asus P5A / Award 4.51pg - bios rev. 1007.a
supports, and couldn't find it. I couldn't find anything on the Asus site
about hd sizes/support for any of the bios revisions........b******s !
EPILOGUE: I gave my friend, (owner of the Asus P5A) a LENGTHY and SEVERE
"telling off" for letting someone muck around with his hardware and software
without first backing all user-created data out to cd-r. ( I happen to know
that he has loads of important info. on his PC )
QUESTION: Assuming that jumpering the 80 gb hd to limit it to 32gb would get
it detected by the Asus P5A 1007.a bios, does anyone happen know if
Powerquests' Drivecopy 3 will "ghost" a dual boot (W98se/XPpro) hd onto a
new hd if XP pro is sitting on a NTFS drive ?
Huge TIA, regards, Richard
some answers for a friend. A last resort, that perhaps really should have
been a major time-saving first resort, is to ask in this W98se NG that
obviously contains the finest micro-brains .......was that a contradiction
in terms...LOL...... (...here's hoping flattery will get me everywhere!)
These questions were raised by a lengthy 'phone conversation with a friend,
who's been allowing one of his friends to muck about with his computer. So,
I wasn't in front of the computer, and was in that position where one
suspects that fibs are being told, or at least one is being given incorrect
information and answers. (Boy oh boy, I could never work in PC telephone
support - SO FRUSTRATING and ANNOYING !! )
The scenario:-
Asus P5A SS7 mobo / AMD K6 500 - old non-pipelined cpu - (i think) based
machine with a nearly full up hard-disk - currently W98se / XPpro dual boot.
Not sure whether XP is sitting on Fat32 NTFS. (They couldn't answer that
question.)
They bought a new 80gb hd and tried to "Maxblast 3" the current hd onto the
new one. I did a some web digging and suspect that Maxblast 3 does not
support replicating/transferring a dual boot system onto a new hd. After
doing this, they said that when they try to boot with just the new 80gb hd
connected, they get a black screen. I did some more web digging and found
some stuff where people had done the same or similar thing, and it seems
that trying to use Maxblast 3 to replicate a dual boot system, it replicates
all drives from the original drive onto the new drive but, leaves the
original W98se boot partition without a mbr.
Then during the 'phone conversation, the friend of a friend said that the
bios on the P5A mobo will not recognize the 80gb hd at all ! i.e. implying
that it doesn't even recognize it as a 32gb hd for example, indicating a
bios inadequacy! Then it came to light that he had attached the 80gb hd to
a different machine in order to format it ! Then it came to light that they
had bought a pci/ide card and had been fiddling around with that as well !
After this confusing 'phone call, I did some web digging to try and find out
what the largest hd is, that the Asus P5A / Award 4.51pg - bios rev. 1007.a
supports, and couldn't find it. I couldn't find anything on the Asus site
about hd sizes/support for any of the bios revisions........b******s !
EPILOGUE: I gave my friend, (owner of the Asus P5A) a LENGTHY and SEVERE
"telling off" for letting someone muck around with his hardware and software
without first backing all user-created data out to cd-r. ( I happen to know
that he has loads of important info. on his PC )
QUESTION: Assuming that jumpering the 80 gb hd to limit it to 32gb would get
it detected by the Asus P5A 1007.a bios, does anyone happen know if
Powerquests' Drivecopy 3 will "ghost" a dual boot (W98se/XPpro) hd onto a
new hd if XP pro is sitting on a NTFS drive ?
Huge TIA, regards, Richard