WD Harddrive

Duzmor · Post by **Duzmor** » Tue Dec 04, 2001 5:48 pm

I Have a 17 Gig WD Harddrive that I won't to install in My Kids computer - When I hook up the Harddrive the BIOS will not pick up the drive- When I go into the Bios to Load the drive the BIOS still will not find the Drive- If I hook up a Segate 2 Gig it loads it fine - Is there some thing I am Doing wroung - The drive does work and the BIOS is up to date ( I am setting jumpers as Master on the drive)

The MOBO Is a Ga-5ax with a AMD-K6-2/500 (2.2V 100*5)

Thanks

Duzmor

TEH WIN · Post by **TEH WIN** » Tue Dec 04, 2001 5:54 pm

Hmm... my new 60 gig seagate drive is doing the same, yet windows (when i dual boot and this drive is the slave) and fdisk still recognize it. just the bios wont...

i too would like an answer

terrancelam · Post by **terrancelam** » Tue Dec 04, 2001 6:00 pm

with the older computers, certain IDE controllers won't recognize the larger sizes. Do you have the detection set to auto in the bios?

BTW have you both recently upgraded your bioses? You might want to consider doing that.

terrancelam · Post by **terrancelam** » Tue Dec 04, 2001 6:03 pm

wast somthing like 6 gigs, but a note to you folks:

If you are using a older hard drive that has already been formatted, autodetect cannot detect the correct parameters of the drive. Thus you must do a low-level format or set the parameters manually in the bios.

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Tue Dec 04, 2001 6:11 pm

///Nods with Terrance///

Most motherboards in the Pentium classic (P-54), PentiumMMX (P-55C), and early Pentium II days had a BIOS limitation of seeing drives up to 8.4 gigs. Now yours being newer than that, seeing your AMD at 500....well, some boards hung around for a while with those early BIOS.

Ruling out that the HD is bad (by perhaps checking to see if another computer sees it), you can fix this several ways.

First...is to check documentation on your motherboard...manual/website/calling their suppot, and see what it's limits are. Often you can find a BIOS upgrade which will increase it's HD capacity recognition. This is the preferred method.

An alternative is to use something called "Drive Overlays". What they are, is a software package made by the hard drive manufacturers which work with early BIOS and their limitations...."fooling the BIOS" into thinking that the BIG hard drive is actually a little hard drive within the limits of the early BIOS. But drive overlays can get buggy, limit the performance of your HD...and create problems down the road sometimes, such as preventing you from "ghosting your image", etc.

Here's a quick article:
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/bios/overDDO-c.html

The new HD that you got...try calling support for it...they can be helpful. Assuming you're familiar with jumper settings (Master, Slave, Cable Select) Generally, most motherboards will take your single hard drive on primary IDE as Cable Select, if it's the only device on your primary IDE ribbon cable. Some motherboards don't like Cable Select (CS), but will work with Master. If you have two devices on the same ribbon cable, then you MUST have a master and a slave. Your primary bootable hard drive with the active partition will be master. cd-rom, zip, or second drive will be slave.

Sometimes looking for the CMOS reset switch can help things alonge too.....to totally reset your BIOS and let auto-detect do it's thing. Are your IDE controllers set to "auto" on all?

Hope this is enough to get you started. I'll be off for the rest of the night, gotta get up early tomorrow in anticipation of a long day of mopping up this new W32.goner virus.

Duzmor · Post by **Duzmor** » Tue Dec 04, 2001 6:22 pm

I have 2 Wd Hard drive a 17 gig and 3 gig - Under the Award Bios - HD when it looks for the HD's It comes up Blank Nothing there- The Bios is the latest Per The MOBO web site - you can hear the drive Start up (drive Parameters: LBA 33242832) on the 17 gig

Duzmor

lost9999 · Post by **lost9999** » Wed Dec 05, 2001 2:45 pm

If they are Western Digital drives you can use Data Lifeguard Tools and install ez-bios. I work for the company that makes the software for WD. The new version works really well. You can get DLG from Western Digital's website or the disc that comes with the drive. If you need any help let me know.

Duzmor · Post by **Duzmor** » Wed Dec 05, 2001 4:57 pm

I got the wd to work- What I had to do is set the jumpers to CS and the Bios found the drive - I have no Idea why it wont work as Master

Thanks for all your Help

Dizmor

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Wed Dec 05, 2001 5:15 pm

Glad that one worked...like I mentioned..."Generally" most mobo's take it that way, but not all. So much hardware, so much variation, nothing cast in stone out there.

lost9999 · Post by **lost9999** » Wed Dec 05, 2001 7:31 pm

Just a FYI if the WDdrive is a single master leave the jumper completly off.

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WD Harddrive

WD Harddrive

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I believe the older limit