EZ-bios hassles- Quantum Lightning HDD

Hi

I'm having hassles with reinstalling an old Quantum Lightning (?=maxtor?)730MB HDD upon which I want to put a clean install of W98.

I've formatted and fdisked the drive OK, one active pri-dos partition, no dud bits...

trouble is I can't persuade it to be bootable. I think the drive would be OK but the EZ-bios won't play with it. It _used_ to say NO PT (?=partiton table)...

so I got the utility from maxtor they say should fix it and it did - good and proper. Now it doesn't say anything at all, just hangs.

But - I can boot from a floppy and see drive C:, put files on it - sys it, it takes the files but doesn't become bootable.

I think it may be that there was another HDD (Western Digital) before on the PC at the same time, when I installed the WD HDD (long ago) it put its version of EZ-bios onto both hdds (I think) and the two are slightly different. Certainly the Quantum has never been the same since.

what makes it worse is that the PC's a Compaq which wants to put a setup partition - will run without it - but I tried putting it back in case that was the "PT" that was missing - all that did was turn the 730MB HDD into a 3MB HDD formatted FAT12! so I got rid of it again.

Can anyone suggest a way to make the Quantum HDD bootable, please? Thanks in advance, Hugh.

 

By today's standards, a 730 MB drive is very very small and probably will not even be sufficient for the installation of current operating systems.

If you must use the drive, use the EZ-BIOS utility to remove EZ-BIOS from the drive and then use it to Low Level Format which will set it to factory standard. By the way, get the EZ-BIOS utility from the site of the disk manufacturer and not from any other. If the drives is WDD get it from them and not from Maxtor.

You may then use FDISK to create a partition, set it as active, re-boot and then format it. Install the OS after that.

The Compaqs do require a Diagnostic partition of approx 12 MB at the start of the drive but that is usually created by their QuickRestore CD. If you are doing a clean install of another version of Windows, the diagnostic partition will not remain and will not be needed.

However, without the diagnostic partition, you will not be able to get into your BIOS by the normal method but will need a SoftPaq from their site which is designed to create the diagnostic partition but can also be used to boot into the BIOS.

 

Dear Mahmud

I know that the drive is small by today's standards, the other HDD in the Compaq is 30GB (split into 6)

The normal function of the 730MB is for overflow & temporary storage - I sometimes put the swapfile there - different ribbon, makes PC slightly faster...

I wanted to make the clean install as the old W98 had got very unstable and I was trying to avoid Windows habit of copying bits out of older versions if it can find them. Then copy the whole caboodle (registry and all) onto the 30GB. Then, put back the apps slowly and surely...

The EZ-BIOS utility came with the 30GB Western Digital drive, it has no option to remove from a non-WD drive.

I got a utility from Maxtor which purported to restore the drive to "out of the box" (their words) condition. But it didn't. EZ-BIOS startup (where you get the option to boot from floppy) now says that the drive is controlled by ROM BIOS; FDISK can make partition and set it active but the drive still does not become bootable. I even tried an old Norton thing which has worked once before - no joy. (had great fun as booting from W98 startup floppy won't allow you to write directly to the drive to "protect long filenames" - of course there weren't any files there, I'd just fdisked it! ")(used DOS6.22 boot floppy in the end)

I have the Compaq diags and setup on floppies already, thus don't need their partition - it's always been more trouble than it is worth, interferes with lots of things. I only tried putting it there in case it was the "PT" which was missing... but it wasnt...

In the end I managed to wangle a clean W98 onto the 30GB by hiding bits of the earlier install and zipping others - and the 730MB is OK for temp. storage again - but it would be useful to get it bootable one day. I've a small "fleet" of 486's and that's a fine size for them... (dual-boot W3.11/W95, lightning fast by todays standards - old software, OrCAD and the like, pre-bloatware runs under DOS)

Thanks for the reply anyway - I note yr. comment about getting it from the correct manufacturer - I think that probably would have worked if it had played with the Quantum. but no joy. perhaps they have a more universal utility than the one I have? but I haven't found it yet.

Best Wishes, Hugh.

 

hi Hugh

There is a Quantum zero fill here:
http://hercules.lss.ksu.edu/download/DRIVERS

May do the trick??

Matt

 

Thanks Mattman, I'll give it a go.
But I thought that a zero-fill was what I'd just done... not sure that the mbplus2 utility really did what it said, although it seemed to ID the drive correctly and did say that it had completed OK... cannot see why else, if the drive is now under ROM BIOS control (as the EZ-BIOS startup screen says), I cannot make it bootable.
Best Wishes, Hugh.

 

Hugh

I've been looking at this and other threads you've posted as well. "Sounds" very similar to an 850mb Maxtor that I've been working with. I came across info that it needed a DDO to work, but since I have zero-filled and played with the Maxblast setup it seems to be working fine without any help.
I can't relive the proceedure I did, so while you have a "blank" disk try different options.
I did find one of the options in Maxblast (EZbios) confusing and went to another (after the reboot). That may have been what made the difference.
Sorry, can't be more specific. Zero-fill my drive again now that it is going fine.....I don't think so !!

Matt
PS Used a copy system to load the OS, saved time when trying different options.

Anyway hope this might help.

 

Hi again mattman -

thanks once more for your remarks, unfortunately having lost too much time on this one - had to get the Compaq running somehow - I've had to "go with what I've got" for now. I finally managed to clear enough space on the 30GB to format the C: partition and put W98 on fresh - 3 times over and still not at all happy with it, but it's working enough for me to start playing catchup... when things have calmed down a bit I will certainly have another crack at the drive, it's in as D: and working fine as such.

when I've finished putting the software back on I'll remove the drive and try it in a different PC, it's tempting to try one of the 486's with different (ROM) BIOS - there's one with a really friendly AMIBIOS, far easier to handle than the Compaq, which regularly seems to go out of its way to do the exact reverse of what you want it to. This will require DDO or similar (528MB limit) - - but I'm curious to see what happens, whether EZ-bios appears at all or DDO or similar... it probably won't work at all as the EZ-bios will presumably have configured itself for the capability of the motherboard, but I do have the mbplus utility on a floppy now and I can fiddle with it without risk of mucking up the Compaq.

I'm stuck with having to keep the Compaq running for a while now. ? the Compaq will see up to 2GB I think - without translation kludges - so this whole thing's rather stupid anyway. But I suppose if you have EZ-bios at all you ?have to have it available for all the drives on the system...

there's a minor advantage that the drive size is not too enormous - FAT16 rather than FAT32! - else I wouldn't be able to try with the 486.

will post back with how I get on but not for a week or so the way things are going.

Thanks again, and good luck, Hugh.