HELP! Hard Drive (IBM) problem.

[Guest]

I am having terrible problem with this stupid (I didn't want to say like that, but it is forcing me to do so).

I recently bought IBM Desktar 75 GXP 75 GB hard drive (I build my computer). But today (first installation) I had terrible problem. I only have one hard drive.

First I istalled it on UDMA ATA100 with ATA100 cable. It did well on BIOS recognize OK (originally jumpers were in position: "16 heads - Cable select", I changed to "16 heads - Master"). But when I boot with boot disk (I tried 6.22, Win 95, Win98 system disk) and when I use fdisk to create DOS partition it doesn't recognize it normally: it says it is 6 Gb.
Ok, then I put it on IDE66 controller (with its ATA100 cables), the same. Then I took out its Ata100 cable and use ATA66 cable (as it said it should be compatable) - same problem.

I then went to Best Buy bought another Hard drive (Maxtor 20 Gb Ata 100) - in order to install OS and then try to recognize IBM drive and format it. Installed it separately. Fine here (with Maxtor drive).
Installed Win98, updated BIOS, VIA, and installed Promise drivers, but after restart it sees IBM hard drive in Device Manager but doesn't give any drive letters.
Installed Win2k. Again BIOS, VIA drivers and Promise ULtra DMA 100 drivers for Win2k. It see in Device Manager, but doesn't give any letter names.

GUYS please tell me what the hack is going on here. I spent whole my for this stupid hard disk.

PLEASE HELP.

Here is my system:

AMD T-Bird 1.2 Ghz
ASUS A7V (with support UDMA100) VIA KT133 chipset.
768 (3x256) Micron PC133 RAM
IBM Desktar 75 GXP 75 GB
Kenwood True 72x
Pioneer DVD 115 16x
X-Gamer 5.1
3-Com Robotics 56 V.90
and others

 

[Guest]

Sanik,

I don't have a drive that big, but I remembered reading this on the KT7 FAQ (<A HREF="http://go.to/kt7faq" target="_new">http://go.to/kt7faq</A>). If you go to the site and search the "Drives" section, you'll be able to access the links in the article. I presume this is your problem.

<b>Why does FDISK not recognise my disk (or RAID array) which is larger than 64GB?</b>

<i>There is a bug in Microsoft's FDISK under WIndows 95, 98 and 98SE that can be corrected by downloading a newer version. See Knowledge Base Article Q263044 for more information. For IBM disks you can download IBM's Disk Manager DiskGo! 2.5 to fix it. For Windows 2000, there is no such 64GB issue. See http://www.storage.ibm.com/techsup/hddtech/welcome.htm. Alternatively use a freeware FDISK replacement such as FreeDOS FDISK that supports up to 128GB.</i>

<b>Why can't I create two 40GB partitions on my 80GB RAID-0 array?</b>

<i>Tom's Hardware says "Unfortunately FDISK reports the drive size of an array modulo 64 GB. This means that FDISK reports arrays larger than 64 GB as the proper size minus 64 GB. However, once you partitioned the array and go into Windows you get the correct size and can fully use it. Thus the only problem is to actually divide such large areas into smaller partitions. With FDISK it's currently impossible to make e.g. two 40 GB partitions out of one 80 GB array. People who want to use the full array as one partition won't have any trouble though. Only FDISK reports the array size wrong. After creating the partition with FDISK you have full access to the complete partition from within Win9x." (click here for original). Alternatively use a freeware FDISK replacement such as FreeDOS FDISK that supports up to 128GB</i>

Mike

 

[Guest]

Thanks Mikem, you r right there is something wrong with fdisk files (of old systems). I had terrible time yesterday and finally I found some utilities from IBM and found Drive Guide (sounds programm for beginners, but). Strangely enough this utility (makes bootable disk first) recognizes HDD first and then asks to put Win95 (or 98) bootable disk, and then everything is working (recognizes more then 32 GB Desktar drives very easily).
I guess this utility fix fdisk itself and then runs it. :-(

Anyway thanks mikem (mannn I am enjoying my computer for the first hour 🙂.