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Large Hard Drive & BIOS upgrade problems



 
 
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  #1  
Old June 11th 04, 10:06 AM
Lago Jardin
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Default Large Hard Drive & BIOS upgrade problems

Hi

My Boot drive is 60G and my old BIOS saw that OK and Fdisk partitioned it OK
some time ago.

For extra storage. I bought a Seagate 120G drive and my then present BIOS
would not see more than 32,248M of the new drive. I then used Seagate's DDO
which worked OK for a few days and it did enable me to format and use the
whole drive. However, after a while, new, large, garbled, phantom folders
began appearing. They could not be deleted. It was not possible to use
either scandisk or defrag on the drive because of the DDO.

I decided to remove the DDO with Seagate tools and go for a BIOS flash
upgrade. I went to www.esupport.com and a link on their website tested my
old BIOS and said that an upgrade was available which would support up to
512G drives. It was specifically designed for my motherboard. It cost about
£14.

The flash was sent in an email with full instructions and was very easy.
Unfortunately, the new BIOS still only showed the same disk drive space as
the old one. Even using Fdisk (the one in ME which supports larger drives),
it could only see and partition 32,248M of the new drive (100% used as
primary dos partition).

E-support have tried to help, via many emails, with this problem. They argue
that I must be doing something wrong because the new BIOS sees the full 60G
of my Boot drive (as did my old BIOS) and therefore it cannot be faulty.

All cables are connected correctly. The new drive is set as secondary
master. The jumpers are all correct on all devices. There is no limit jumper
on the new drive.

I have even disconnected all other drives/CD/DVD and tried the new drive as
Primary Master but the BIOS still only sees 32,248M.

I have read every Microsoft article about large drives in ME but this cannot
be a Windows issue anyway, can it?

I have the newest chipset drives from my motherboard manufacturer. My IDE
controller should support large drives.

Why can my old and new BIOS see the full extent of a 60G drive but only
32,248M of a 120G drive. E-support say this is impossible. They say it must
see 60G in both and should see all of the 120G drive. I can only say that
they have tried very hard to resolve this.

I don't want to return my new BIOS flash and get a refund because im just
back where I started.

Any ideas please so that I can pass them to E-support.



Thanks a lot

Nigel

Motherboard Mercury (Kobian) KOB 845 NFSX)
Chipset Intel 1A30 rev 3
120 GIG Seagate drive (model ST3120022A)
Microsoft Windows ME Version: 4.90.3000
Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 1500 Mhz
Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG
(Release 5.0) AwardBIOS Upgrade Provided by eSupport.com



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  #2  
Old June 12th 04, 02:08 PM
Geir Klemetsen
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default


"Lago Jardin" skrev i melding
. ..
Hi

My Boot drive is 60G and my old BIOS saw that OK and Fdisk partitioned it

OK
some time ago.

For extra storage. I bought a Seagate 120G drive and my then present BIOS
would not see more than 32,248M of the new drive. I then used Seagate's

DDO
which worked OK for a few days and it did enable me to format and use the
whole drive. However, after a while, new, large, garbled, phantom folders
began appearing. They could not be deleted. It was not possible to use
either scandisk or defrag on the drive because of the DDO.

I decided to remove the DDO with Seagate tools and go for a BIOS flash
upgrade. I went to www.esupport.com and a link on their website tested my
old BIOS and said that an upgrade was available which would support up to
512G drives. It was specifically designed for my motherboard. It cost

about
£14.

The flash was sent in an email with full instructions and was very easy.
Unfortunately, the new BIOS still only showed the same disk drive space as
the old one. Even using Fdisk (the one in ME which supports larger

drives),
it could only see and partition 32,248M of the new drive (100% used as
primary dos partition).

E-support have tried to help, via many emails, with this problem. They

argue
that I must be doing something wrong because the new BIOS sees the full

60G
of my Boot drive (as did my old BIOS) and therefore it cannot be faulty.

All cables are connected correctly. The new drive is set as secondary
master. The jumpers are all correct on all devices. There is no limit

jumper
on the new drive.

I have even disconnected all other drives/CD/DVD and tried the new drive

as
Primary Master but the BIOS still only sees 32,248M.

I have read every Microsoft article about large drives in ME but this

cannot
be a Windows issue anyway, can it?

I have the newest chipset drives from my motherboard manufacturer. My IDE
controller should support large drives.

Why can my old and new BIOS see the full extent of a 60G drive but only
32,248M of a 120G drive. E-support say this is impossible. They say it

must
see 60G in both and should see all of the 120G drive. I can only say that
they have tried very hard to resolve this.

I don't want to return my new BIOS flash and get a refund because im just
back where I started.

Any ideas please so that I can pass them to E-support.



Thanks a lot

Nigel

Motherboard Mercury (Kobian) KOB 845 NFSX)
Chipset Intel 1A30 rev 3
120 GIG Seagate drive (model ST3120022A)
Microsoft Windows ME Version: 4.90.3000
Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 1500 Mhz
Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG
(Release 5.0) AwardBIOS Upgrade Provided by eSupport.com



---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.701 / Virus Database: 458 - Release Date: 07/06/2004


Check the jumpers on your harddrive. Most modern drives have a
jumper-setting that makes the drive only report it's size, about 32Gb. Red
the label on the top of your disk. The jumper setings of the drive is
probably described there.
If not, try to search on the net for "%drive name% jumper settings".


 




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