Hard drive not recognizing full capability

My thoughts and things that I have run into over the years.

That is what I am basing my thoughts on.

Knowing OEM machines well enough to know that some of them are not industry standard and may be Model specific. ( dell non-standard PS has been discussed a long time ago ) As Bitbyter stated many things may be made ( set ) specificly for that model ( version ).

Some of them are not upgradable. Or if they are there is a limit to which they can be pushed. It is * possible * that Liz171 is trying to exceed that limit. I can think that but just do not know for sure if it is true.

As Bitbyter also stated the Master Boot record ( which I believe is on the 1st HD ) contains the date for ALL hard drives, and any partitions of same. If this info is not correct not even Windows will run the HD correctly regardless of what it says.

I do know ( from experience ) that if the Cylinders, Heads and Sectors are not correct in the BIOS then nothing may read or use the drive correctly. I believe the BIOS entries must read the same as the ones on the HD or things may not go right. Sometimes this data needs to be entered manually for the first time. But again we are dealing with a BIOS that I know nothing about.

I have three machine and all have Award BIOS. And every one is DIFFERENT. This newer one I still have not figured out completely. But all seems to be working properly so I am not going to mess with it. ( yet anyway )

My daughter has a brand new Dell machine with XP. She has a problem. I WILL NOT touch it. She says to me " Dad, you know all about computers. ". MY answer. " Sorry dear but I do not. Only about the ones that I build or or other non-OEM machines." If I tried ( on hers ) some of the stuff that I do with this one I would kill it in about 10 minutes ( or at least the OS in less maybe ) I am not at this time familiar with a Multi user setup. Let alnoe XP.

BillyBob

 

This is something we all basically admitted to from the very start was not knowing enough about this BIOS, or Dell computers themselves.

My husbands machine has Award BIOS, but it is a bit different to mine. When he tried to install an 80GB on his machine his BIOS would see only 32GB of it. Unfortunately his Aopen motherboard manual said diddly squat about his BIOS version, so we had to get the info off the boot up screen & spent a couple of hours looking it up on the Internet. My Tyan manual doesn't mention that either. Why don't the Motherboard manufacturers tell about that in the manuals, & especially tell how big of a hard drive it will support? I had to look all over creation to find those things out for both of us.

It is an unfortunate circumstance that things are not as we would like them to be with your machine, Lis, but I don't think that even a considerable knowledge of Phionex BIOS would have changed the outcome one iota, because as BillyBob, & Bitbyter say, Dell computers seem to be BIOS specific for the particular model of Dell computer, and basically Dell's are not very upgrade friendly. Few OEM machines are.

Trying to upgrade, & flash a BIOS sounds darn scary to me. If not done right, your whole motherboard is shot.

As I am not well versed in the art of technical lingo, and limited in my knowledge of certain aspects of these critters, it remains a curosity to me why everything sees all of the drive except probably the BIOS. In this situation I would be a bit juberish about the whole thing, but I know that I would be in that BIOS setup trying to find out everything I could, studying it, & seeing if I could find a way to fix it in there. If I couldn't, then I'd be figuring a way to afford a smaller slave drive that it would see all of it.

A lot of good did come out of this whole thread though. Lis learned to overcome some of her fears, and learned to do several very useful things for herself. Now she knows how, & won't have to depend on someone else to do those particular things for her, and her bravery for such things will only increase with time. That in itself is priceless.

 

The ata card i listed a couple times will even work on a P2 266 motherboard as long as it has a PCI slot. That I have done and with a 120GB hdd.
There is no messing with bios and if you get the ATA133 that they list no limit for, it will work with 4 hdds of 137,000,000 Gb each which they at present do not make.

Why do you think I spent $38 for a card? They work! At present I have 2 - 40s and a 80 plus a 120GB hdds running on one.
The ps I was curious about, but I do believe it will pull the 2nd hdd and a cdrw also. Maybe close, but I do believe it will.

 

I agree with what Bitbyter said above. I will just wait and see if I encounter any problems, then post them here and hopefully my smart tech pals *pointing at all of you*, can help me figure out a way of either solving it, or simply removing the drive. For now, all seems AOK, but with my luck, my C drive will crash due to some unfortunate virus or software --*I actually know a bit about software and help others at other tech forums, every so often *-- incident, and the information I have stored on my 80GB will be corrupted or damaged

Anyway, I expect to be purchasing a brand new system within a year or a little more, so if my cranky old Dell can make it until then, I'm happy. lol And yes yes yes, I will take all of your advice and NOT get an OEM system again! hehe

 

Not trying to preach here and will try to stay close to on-topic.

Lis, glad things have worked out well for you. If you FDisk your Master Boot Record, your problem screen should self correct.

Re: BIOS - they are all MB specific, regardless of manufacturer. They are usually very upgradeable to accomodate hardware that is released after the Bios bin files were written or to resolve hardware conflicts that are discovered after the Bios was released. Messing up a Bios flash does not destroy a Motherboard but can make it "unbootable" until the Bios chip itself is reflashed correctly in another machine by hot flashing it or using an EEProm programmer or by replacing the chip with one that has the correct BIOS bin files properly installed. A boot virus will do the same thing. "Pre-programmed" replacement chips can be purchased from most MB manufacturers or companies like BadFlash.com

As to comments about Dell, everyone is entitled to their own opinion and no one wants me to get started on that subject. They make some good stuff and they make some garbage - so do most other manufacturers. There is nothing mystical about them - (they are not so spooky as to invoke fear)

Hehehe - did they just recall 20,000+ notebooks?

The PS diagrams you saw included an ATX connector and an auxilliary 12V connector which is not uncommon by today's standards. The deviation Dell made to ATX power supplies involved a "tricked" pinout on the ATX MB connector itself which requires a similarly "tricked" PS connector to avoid shorting out the MB. This did not include all Dell machines, but was a limited practice.

I too believe your current PS is more than adequate for your current configuration.

In closing - again, I'm glad you got your drive properly reconfigured. All info you received was very well intentioned, as was the help you originally got from your friend who set it up incorrectly. I read some very good advice in this thread and a little not so good advice. Fortunately, it appears that you have navigated your way through it.

 

Re: Advice

It is very hard to give correct and accurate advice, without the problem PC in front of you. As a result, we tend to dredge all possible sources out of our 1/2 brain cells. hehehe

Maxtor HDDs and older BIOSes:

Maxtor drives are not always recognized properly. To get around this, you need to have bios get the drive info: easy on a non-oem system. I ran into this problem myself, with a 20 gig Maxtor drive and an Epox motherboard!

My first thought on reading the first post, was fdisk without large drive support enabled. Turned out I was wrong on that.

Why does everyone (or so it seems) swear by Partition Magic??? I had version 3 and hated it totally. I use Partition Commander with System Commander Personal Edition, and love both of them.

Drive overlays and EZBios:

I hate overlays. EZBios is the only way to get full 32 bit hdd access, and that only works with Windows. I wish the hdd manufacturers would not do that!!

All of the above, is merely my thought on some things that came up in this thread.

 

I've just had a similar problem on a used computer I bought on Ebay. I bought it to play with. It is a compact Pentium II. It lists my hard drive as being 6 gigs and change but when I looked at the hard drive it said it was a 20 gig. That's as far as I've gotten.
But the total space of the drive isn't being recognized.

I've since loaned the computer to a friend who had a breakdown.

But I would be curious to know why this computer didn't recognize the full hard drive. Maybe the auto-recognize feature wasn't enabled. If that was so, and I enabled it would there be any danger of losing data?

 

The probelm is probably that the disk was not fully partitioned, as I got the impression was the case with Liz's PC in the beginning. Boot to a DOS prompt, and type FDISK. Say "Y" to the stuff about large hard drives, then select "Display Partition Information ". If, as I suspect, it shows a single partition of 6GB, then press escape, and select option #2 "Create extended DOS Partiton ". This is a new partition, and will not affect any data already on the hard drive. After you have created the partition, you can reboot your PC normally. In Windows, open "My Computer" and you should see a new hard drive. Right-click on it, and say format. Don't worry about formatting the wrong drive - Windows has enough intelligence not to format itself out of existence - if only barely

BTW does this represent a record for thread ressurection at 5-1/2 months?

 

I've uploaded Ranish here