hdd controller failure error

[Guest]

I keep getting HDD controller failure when I boot my 486 with AMIBIOS and western digital 1.0GB hdd. This hdd used to work on this computer but then I partitioned it in another newer computer. I have tried fdisk-ing it and formatting it, but the error doesn't go away. I believe the hdd settings in the bios are correct. Is there any way I can fix this?
thanks

 

[Crashman]

There are a lot of differences, mainly you might need to set the drive type to LBA in bios and then do everything all over agian, or manually set up the hard drive in bios.

Suicide is painless...........

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the reply...

I don't think the BIOS has any options for LBA, and I have tried every setting for the hard drive. I even got some utilities from WD to try set the drive up with those but no luck. IN fact it was with those that I was able to even get the drive partitioned and formatted because the windows fdisk utility thinks that I only have about 500MB available even though it says that the partition size is over 1000MB. I was even able to install windows95 but after it asked for a restart it could not boot up anymore. Same thing happened with a linux distro. I was able to install it, but then it could not boot at all.

It seems like such a weird problem. I mean I had the same hard drive working before and as far as I can tell there is nothing wrong with any of the hardware.

Any other suggestions?

 

[Crashman]

Could be two things there-you have to use a 95 version B or newer bootdisk and click (Y) to enable large disk support and 2.) you have to enable LBA somehow in bios.

Suicide is painless...........

 

[Guest]

>>Could be two things there-you have to use a 95 version B or newer bootdisk and click (Y) to enable large disk support and<<

No

>>2.) you have to enable LBA somehow in bios.<<

It is not uncommon especially for older bioses on 486 mbs to not support LBA. If you have Large mode, you could select this addressing and it would solve it as well. But a lot of times if LBA is not supported Large mode is not either. So you are left with the old CHS addressing for IDE drives that limits you to 500MB. You can sometimes get manufacturers programs to solves this (I don't know why the WD program didn't), but it is better to fix it in the bios. If you can not get an upgrade for your bios to support LBA and you have a spare PCI slot, you could use one of the ATA66/100 controllers available today to bypass this. If you only have an ISA slot available, you could probably still find an ATA33 ISA controller to bypass this limitation in the bios.



***Hey I run Intel... but let's get real***

 

[Crashman]

Yes, most 486's with built in controllers had LBA. I would certainly hope he does not have anything older than that! And certainly almost anything new enough to have PCI would have LBA available.
For less than what he would pay for a card I could sell him a barebones pentium w/processor.

Suicide is painless...........

 

[Guest]

>>most 486's <<
not true, some would be a better answer. And some with bios upgrades. I said it was not uncommon not impossible. I have found plenty of 486s with integrated controllers without support for LBA in the bios.

Considering this is the obvious problem and the original poster as indicated the inability to find a setting for LBA, I'd say his doesn't unless he reports back that he found it in hard drive setup.


***Hey I run Intel... but let's get real***

 

[Crashman]

I should have pointed out that sometimes it's hard to find. And some bios has a detection program. You should run the detection program for your drive if it has that type of bios (AMI I belive).

Suicide is painless...........