Anything Forums

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

i've a 80G seagate barracuda 7200.7 which was installed with win xp pro and the master drive. i reformatted it recently n now i can't reinstall my windows xp for some reason. i didn't think of it as a problem as i thought i could use it as a SLAVE drive to my 30G seagate hdd. that's when the problems arose. my bios only recognises the 80G hdd as 33G when it is in slave mode. however when it is master mode, it recognises it as 80G because of the dynamic driver overlay (DDO) software inbuilt in the hdd.
I've downloaded the seagate disc starter edition to install the dynamic drive overlay (DDO) on the 30G seagate, even then it stil does not work. even worse, i updated the DDO of the 80G hdd n now it does not recognise the 80G even in master mode! so basically i'm screwed!
reason y i can't format my 80G hdd is because i have 2 partitions, one containing data i rele need. n i doubt that it would solve any problems anyway.
Pls help. i'm just between a rock and a hard place now, and i've totally run out of ideas.
any help appreciated, thanks.

Kenny

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:2237, old post ID:18851

hmm, what type of motherboard is it? Is it an old computer like a pentium 3 or something? We had a P3 and it limited to 32GB (it was actually a P3 chip on a P2 board lol). I never tried it, but I'm pretty sure you can flash the bios to make it support larger drives. Also check the bios for the cylinder settings and such to make sure they are set correctly, but that usually autodetects though.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:2237, old post ID:18852

i tried updating the bios to no avail.
yea i know these problems usually happen wit older machines, but i have an athlon xp 1800+, 512 ddram, shuttle ak35tgt mobo, gf2 gts pro.


Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:2237, old post ID:18853

Maybe lookup the specs for the mobo, maybe it does have a limit... I can't see why though as it seems fairly new age and not antique or anything. If it worked as slave but not master is kind of odd too... Maybe the HDD has a jumper for 32GB limitation and you're moving the wrong one by accident? when the hdd is in the case it's sometimes hard to see exactly when the jumper is going.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:2237, old post ID:18888

Check your motherboard and BIOS to see how new they are. If they were made in the last year or so you should be OK.

Windows XP Pro and a recent BIOS version should be fine with an 80GB drive without the need for loading a dynamic drive overlay.

Since you have stuff on the 80GB hard drive that you want, you are in a bit of a sticky mess. You need to hope that reinstalling the DDO on the drive didn't wipe your data off.

You could try connecting your old 30GB System hard drive as the Master on one of the IDE channels of the motherboard (IDE 0) and connect the 80GB drive as the Master on the other IDE channel (IDE 1). If necessary, unplug the CD drive etc. Check you have the jumpers set correctly on each drive (ie: 16 heads, master). Note if you have it set at 15 heads this will more than half the GB capacity of the drive.

Reboot your system and go into the BIOS setup. Try to autotype the drives and see what size the BIOS thinks they are. If it is reported as 80GB, life is sweet, exit the BIOS setup and let Windows load.

If it is still reported as too small, let Windows load and then try to see if you can access the data on the drive that you want. Hopefully it will be on the accessible active partition. If you can, get it off quick. If you can't see the data, try using partition magic to look at the drive. This program will allow you to resize partitions on the fly etc. Make sure the partition with your data is active in order to allow windows access to it to get your data off.

If you do manage to get your data off the drive somehow, I'd then repartition it to contain only 1 partition and remove the dynamic drive overlay altogether. You shouldn't need it with a new mobo/BIOS. Remove the 30GB drive from your system and connect the 80GB drive as the only Master. Go back into the BIOS and autotype the drive. Then install Windows XP on the drive, it should partition, format and mark the drive as bootable for you during the install process.

If you do get it working, it is best to have the bigger drive as the Master and the smaller one as the slave. I had to do this on my computer, it really wasn't happy with the big one as the slave.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:2237, old post ID:18904