Blasted BIOS!!!

Beener

SOS - I have a just physically added a second hardrive to my computer - on the physical test the computer is happy and finds the new drive (it is a Samsung 120gig). I "del" into the bios setup and go to the find automatic HDD and run it. The Primary Master is fine and dandy (a 12gig Matrox), it then moves on to the Samsung which I have put as the Primary Slave. I goes into the Auto-Dectecting sequence and seems to hang there forever.

How long should this take? Does it have to check the whole drive, cylinders etc (and on a 120 gig drive - take ages as it is only a PIII). Or should this be quick? I can't get the computer beyond this point so I can't go forward to format it. The Primary Master (C drive) is untouched and running windows xp - so should just boot up normally and then I can format the new drive from within XP.... if I could only get there!!! Where am I going wrong or am I just being a dunce?

primesuspect

This isn't an emergency. Moved to storage forum

primesuspect

First of all, make sure you have the very latest BIOS for your motherboard. Many older motherboards couldn't support drives over 80gb.

What kind of motherboard do you have?

Beener

I have a Gigabyte GA-BX200+ (Intel 440BX AGPset)- and I have just updated the bios from the website - still no joy.

TheBaron

that qualifies as "an older board"

TheSmJ

(a 12gig Matrox)

Matrox makes hard drives?

EDIT TO MAKE THIS POST USEFUL: Looks like your mobo is just too old to support the drive.

primesuspect

to be perfectly honest, it probably just can't support the drive.

You might want to check out if samsung offers "overlay" software - it's like a fake bootsector that tricks the bios into seeing only an 8gig drive, but when you get into windows, it can see the whole thing. As far as I know, only seagate, maxtor, and western digital offer overlays, and since it's for old hardware, probably don't even offer it anymore.

Maybe it's time to upgrade your computer

muddocktor

You could also buy an ATA133 PCI card and boot from it also, plus you would see much improved performance too. Somthing like this HighPoint PCI to ATA Controller Card would do you just fine and would leave the native BX ide channels open for your cd drives.


Prime, don't write off the old BX chipset off just yet!;)

primesuspect

Hey, there's no way I would write it off. I use it all the time - in fact this server is running a BX chipset

JChretien

my other computer uses the 440BX =D its good hehe

Beener

Wow - thanks for everyones help!! I did update the bios so it now will support up to 75gig so I will have to take the 120 back. I wasn't able to find any overlay software - but 60gig should be enough for what I need it for. I have four slots for Memory and at the moment I have a pair of 256's in - is 512 the max the board supports? I would like to double it (I will use the refund money from downgrading from the 120 to a 60. I looked on the gigabite website and it didn't seem to say. The board is good and I am still running XP on the main C drive (16 gig) so this is a new back up extra media D drive that I am hoping to add.

MJO

I am assuming you have a Maxtor harddrive.

If that is indeed the case, the overlay software is right here:
http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Maxtor/?epi_menuItemID=3c67e325e0a6b1f6294198b091346068&epi_menuID=976d37cd478c5826433f226075b46068&epi_baseMenuID=976d37cd478c5826433f226075b46068&channelpath=/en_us/Support/Software%20Downloads/ATA%20Hard%20Drives&downloadID=57

Have a look here as well.
http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Maxtor/?epi_menuItemID=8db0c3d6932ced37294198b091346068&epi_menuID=976d37cd478c5826433f226075b46068&epi_baseMenuID=976d37cd478c5826433f226075b46068&channelpath=/en_us/Support/Software%20Downloads
There are three Maxblast utillities, I have linked to the first one.
Ata hard drives -> select utillity -> scroll down to Maxblast

muddocktor

The old BX chipset is good for 1 gig of ram and since you do have 4 dimm slots, you can do it. Just be sure that the SDRAM you buy isn't high density 256 MB sticks as the BX chipset won't work correctly with high density drams. I know for a fact that Crucial PC133 cas2 ram will work great in the old BX chipset boards though.

Beener

Hey Muddocktor - you are a star! And MJo - unfortunately the new 120gig HD is a Samsung not a Maxtor (I always have habit of saying Matrox when I mean Maxtor )!
But if you know of any Samsung Overlay Software let me know. Cheers for both of your help!

Beener

I sorted it out - it is now running the 120 gig happy as larry. Cheers guys you were great!

muddocktor

Glad you sorted the drive out, Beener. If you want to improve your new drive's performance though, I would highly recommend a pci ATA133 or ATA100 card though. The BX chipset only supports ATA33 speeds and you would see a noticeable speed gain with the add-in pci controller card. You didn't say where you live, but if you are in the US you can get a decent pci controller card for around $30 delivered to your house from Newegg. It would be a definite great upgrade for that old system.

When Intel made the old BX chipset, they really didn't realize what a stellar chipset it really was; too bad they didn't just modernize it instead of producing the i815 chipset, which didn't perform as well and was memory limited to only 512 MB ram max.

MJO

Beener wrote:

Hey Muddocktor - you are a star! And MJo - unfortunately the new 120gig HD is a Samsung not a Maxtor (I always have habit of saying Matrox when I mean Maxtor )!
But if you know of any Samsung Overlay Software let me know. Cheers for both of your help!

Good to hear that you solved the problem.

Actually I have found a Samsung utillity.
Right here:
http://www.samsung.com/Products/HardDiskDrive/utilities/index.htm
It is called Disk Manager.

Creep

I'm suprised to see no one suggested checking the jumpers

Guyute

I also was going to suggest the IDE hookups- I tried to get mine to read a slave and it turned out I had the hookups mixed up because the instructions with the new HDD said that the end plug is the master...it wasn't!