Resolved Thinking of Updating my BIOS!

Hi all. I recently had a new PATA 320 GB harddrive installed as my main C drive and I have a secondary harddrive with 37 GB which was my old C drive but it is now my E drive. Anyway my new 320 GB C drive is only recognized by my Windows Vista Ultimate OS as being only 127 GB in size. I looked on the requirements of the harddrive box and it says that it needs a 48 bit BIOS in order for the harddrive to be detected by my OS as a full 320 GB drive. The harddrive comes with a CD which I assume is for drivers for the new drive and I will try that the next time I am on my computer. The BIOS version I have is American Megatrends version 1.111. My motherboard is an MS-6534 motherboard that uses an Intel 845 chipset. I already have the latest drivers for my motherboard but I need some guidance on how to upgrade my BIOS to a more current version that supports newer hardware. I have googled around looking for an answer and have been unsuccessfull so far. Thanks for any assisstance with this issue.

 

Couple of foods for thought:

1) Updating the bios can be dangerous and very harmfull if it goes wrong.

2) You can click on Start->Run and type: diskmgnt.msc
From there, you can create additional partitions to reclaim the rest of the drive space.

 

Hey Steve. I will go into disk managment and try that out. Would you recommend updating my BIOS or should I use the if it aint broke don't fix it approach and just leave my BIOS alone? BTW I have never updated my BIOS before and I don't really know how the process would work. Thanks for the info.

 

Chiles4,
two-three weeks ago my friends hard disk crashed. It was an 80 GB Maxtor in an IBM NetVista (6823 KRG), a fairly recent computer with a 2 GHz P4 and 512 MB RAM. The replacement hard disks (yes, suddenly he wanted backups) were 160 GB Seagates. I had to flash the BIOS for the correct size of the hard disks to be recognized.

Flashing the BIOS can be scary and your fear condenses into small droplets on your forehead ... ... but if you have made certain that you have got the correct BIOS version and the correct flash utility on the bootable floppy, it should go well, provided that you don't get impatient and THINK that it has finished before it really HAS FINISHED. In other words, no ctrl-alt-del until told to do it.

Christer

 

Thanks guys for the info. I've been away for my computer for a few days so I haven't been able to go into disk managment and check the partitions. I will do that today when I get home from school. BTW I forgot to include a link that lists the details of my motherboard. http://www.msicomputer.com/product/detail_spec/MS6534.htm Hope this will provide more information. I will post back whether I was able to reclaim the rest of my disk space using disk managment.

 

I found that link yesterday. When I click "BIOS Download" I am redirected to a selectable MSI site - I choose "Global ". Clicking "Download" and under "Manually Download" using the drop-downs to select the correct motherboard, I reach this page: MS-6534 and from there to BIOS. It seems like version 1.3 is what you're looking for but since BIOS updates are cumulative, I would opt for version 1.4 (the latest and probably last update).

After downloading the file "6534v14.exe ", double-clicking on it will make it self extract. I recommend to extract it to a separate folder, e.g. "C:\test" (suggested by MSI in the "How to ... "). In that folder, you will find the file "How to flash the BIOS.doc" which tells you NOT to flash from a floppy (contrary to my procedure in my post above). They want you to just boot from a DOS floppy and go to the downloaded and extracted files on the hard disk but that means that the file system has to be FAT32 (on the hard disk). A DOS program can not read NTFS which is the predominant file system for XP. Scrolling down a bit in that document and you will find "Flashing the BIOS for Non-FAT file system (Thanks to Forum Moderator Assaf for his valuable contribution) ".

I understand that people get intimidated by the complicated procedure and I don't understand why MSI insist on it. Maybe they are preventing read errors by copying to the RAMDRIVE and I agree that a worn floppy disk can produce read errors. Most vendors recommend using the simplest boot floppy that can contain the BIOS flash files as well but a Win98 or WinME start disk must be used in this procedure since a simple boot floppy does not create the RAMDRIVE (I think).

No matter what, it should work to follow their procedure.

Christer

 

Hey Christer. I have an update on my issue. I went into my BIOS to see what version I was running and I am happy to say that I was actually already running the most current version which was version 1.41. In my first post I looked under system information and under BIOS version it says American Megatrends version 1.11 so I am sorry to give you the wrong information regarding my BIOS version. So I think that we can take the BIOS out of the equation. I went into disk managment and I saw my new harddrive. 128 GB's is where my OS and all of my applications are installed. The other 170 GB's is unallocated space. So now the question is, is my motherboard to old to recognize my new 320 GB drive and can it only recognize the drive only up to 128 GB's? Or is this a Vista issue where I can allocate the unused space and expand the partition on which my OS and applications are installed to the capacity of the entire drive. Can this be done? Thanks for the support.

 

Evan,

Well, I didn't remember that when I searched for the BIOS revisions on the MSI site.

Not just yet, in BIOS, is there an option to disable/enable 48-bit LBA? If so, set it to "enable ".

Another possibiblity, is there a jumper on the hard disk, restricting it to the smaller size? I have no hard disk out in the open right now but I seem to remember having seen jumper settings restricting the size.

I don't know, I have only seen Vista once ... ... !

Christer

 

Thanks for that, Rockster ... ... I forgot that the old hard disk is connected but assumed that a reinstallation on the new hard disk is on the "to do list" if things get sorted out.

Any user data on the old hard disk must be burnt to CD/DVD prior to the change (if the option is there).

Christer

 

Chiles4,
I'll check in my BIOS to see if I have the 48-bit LBA option. Under disk management how do I allocate and format the extra 170 GB's of unused space on the drive? I have never needed to create or format any partitions on my drive up to this point so I could use some guidance on how to have my drive show up as a 320 GB drive in my computer rather than as a 128 GB drive. I understand what I have to do but I just don't know how to do it when I'm in disk management.

 

Chiles4,
Thanks for the input. I figured that it probably wasn't a BIOS issue. When I first had Windows XP installed I had a C drive that had my OS and my applications on it. The size of the drive was 37 GB's. I also had an E drive that was 19 GB's which I stored my documents on. When I got Vista I did an in-place-upgrade so I kept all of my settings and I did not have to do any disk managment on the drives because they each had one partition that took up the capacity of the entire drive. I got a 320 GB drive and transfered everything from my 37 GB drive to the new 320 GB drive. I then formatted the 37 GB drive and transfered everything from the 19 GB drive to the 37 GB drive. Right now I have my C drive which is 320 GB's in size but the partition that has my programs and my OS is only 128 GB and not 320 GB's. My E drive is now 37 GB's in size. I also think I have figured out how to expand the 128 GB partition so it takes up the 170 GB's of unallocated space. I will report back on whether I was successfull with epxanding the 128 GB partition to 320 GB's.

 

Hey everyone. I was able to solve my issue. Basically I went into disk managment and I right clicked on the 128 GB partition and I clicked expand volume. I followed the prompts and when I clicked finish the 170 GB's of unallocated space became allocated towards the 128 GB partition. I then went into My Computer and now it reports that my drive has a capacity of 320 GB's with 267 GB's of free space. I think we can now say that this issue is officially resolved. Thanks to everyone who provided their feedback and expertise. I definitly learned a lot throughout this experience.

I still have one small question. After all of my data was transfered from my 37 GB drive to the new 320 GB drive why did my drive end up having 128 GB of space and 170 GB's of unallocated space? Shouldn't the drive just had one partition that took up the capacity of the entire drive? It is somewhat baffling.

 

Actually Mattman, I already had Windows XP SP2 installed before I upgraded to Vista. So I never upgraded to Windows XP. It came preinstalled when I got my machine in 2004. After I got my machine I immediatly upgraded to SP2. I then upgraded to Vista Ultimate in 2007. Anyway maybe the reason my drive didn't have one partition was maybe it was a Vista issue. The Vista OS is still pretty new so hopefully SP1 will fix some of the issues I have noticed.