Large Hard Drive & BIOS upgrade problems

Hi
Im not sure if its OK to post this here but its very tecky so I hope someone
may be able to help me. Sorry if its a little off topic.

My Boot drive is 60G and my old BIOS saw that OK and Fdisk partitioned it
OKsome 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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"Lago Jardin" wrote in message
. ..
Hi
Im not sure if its OK to post this here but its very tecky so I hope
someone
may be able to help me. Sorry if its a little off topic.

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

WTF, you don't pay for bios updates, ver 1.1a is available here;
http://snipurl.com/704h
This looks like the latest version available, I wish I could sell bios
updates by email, LOL.


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.

Demand a refund now, it doesn't work, and even if it did how are they going
to know that you've got it installed. Get the FREE official bios from
Kobian and re-flash it anyway, it definately sounds like a bios issue, but
the fact that it recognises your 60GB drive is confusing.
I can't remember what sizes can give problems, but almost everything from
the last couple of years should recognise upto IIRC 138GB, then you need
LBA48 support (?) for drives larger than this.
If they've hacked around with the bios, even just to change the description,
then I wouldn't trust it to be stable. There are people who hack bioses,
but they are competant programmers/hackers, and their efforts are excellent.


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


Tell them that they are robbing *******s ;o)

On a more serious note, please don't take offence from my post it's just
that I've never heard of anyone paying for a bios, bios-chip perhaps after
corruption etc., but not a bios file freely available.

Try going into the bios, (hopefully the official 1.1b), and auto detecting
the drives again, or try setting it manually in the bios.

HTH

--
Ian

"Apollo" wrote in message
...

Try going into the bios, (hopefully the official 1.1b), and auto detecting
the drives again, or try setting it manually in the bios.


Sorry this should read 1.1a

--
Ian

Hi Ian

Yer i agree with u about paying for a BIOS flash. It was very much a last
resort having paid out for a 120G drive.
I saw the flash upgrade for my motherboard on Mercury's site but it only
contained minor fixes. In fact, there was a direct link from their website
to esupport who Mercury say now provide the latest flash upgrades for their
m/b. So the implication was that if u want the very latest u have to pay.

As I paid by credit card I can get a refund if i dont get it working. Ive
plenty of evidence from them that they guarantee 100% success. It may be a
rip off but i doubt it because of the number/speed of support emails they
have sent me. Having said that, it still doesn't work

Any idea why my BIOS (new and old) can see all of a 60G drive but only about
32G of a 120G drive.

Could there be any remnants of the DDO hanging around?

Thanks again for taking time to reply and ur help.

Nigel







"Apollo" wrote in message
...

"Lago Jardin" wrote in message
. ..
Hi
Im not sure if its OK to post this here but its very tecky so I hope
someone
may be able to help me. Sorry if its a little off topic.

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

WTF, you don't pay for bios updates, ver 1.1a is available here;
http://snipurl.com/704h
This looks like the latest version available, I wish I could sell bios
updates by email, LOL.


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.

Demand a refund now, it doesn't work, and even if it did how are they
going
to know that you've got it installed. Get the FREE official bios from
Kobian and re-flash it anyway, it definately sounds like a bios issue, but
the fact that it recognises your 60GB drive is confusing.
I can't remember what sizes can give problems, but almost everything from
the last couple of years should recognise upto IIRC 138GB, then you need
LBA48 support (?) for drives larger than this.
If they've hacked around with the bios, even just to change the
description,
then I wouldn't trust it to be stable. There are people who hack bioses,
but they are competant programmers/hackers, and their efforts are
excellent.


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


Tell them that they are robbing *******s ;o)

On a more serious note, please don't take offence from my post it's just
that I've never heard of anyone paying for a bios, bios-chip perhaps after
corruption etc., but not a bios file freely available.

Try going into the bios, (hopefully the official 1.1b), and auto detecting
the drives again, or try setting it manually in the bios.

HTH

--
Ian




---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.703 / Virus Database: 459 - Release Date: 10/06/2004

Hi Ian

In the flash upgrade. Auto detect is on. It only auto detects about 32G of
the 120G drive. I cannot use the manual setting, it just reverts back to
auto. I was going to try the manual detect and get the setting from the
Seagate site.

Do u mean reverse the flash and get the 1.1b flash?

Thanks

Nigel



"Apollo" wrote in message
...

"Apollo" wrote in message
...

Try going into the bios, (hopefully the official 1.1b), and auto
detecting
the drives again, or try setting it manually in the bios.


Sorry this should read 1.1a

--
Ian




---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.703 / Virus Database: 459 - Release Date: 10/06/2004

"Lago Jardin" wrote in message
. ..
Hi Ian

In the flash upgrade. Auto detect is on. It only auto detects about 32G of
the 120G drive. I cannot use the manual setting, it just reverts back to
auto. I was going to try the manual detect and get the setting from the
Seagate site.

Do u mean reverse the flash and get the 1.1b flash?

Thanks

Yes, I personally would flash with the latest official version (1.1a), from
the link I gave, (you can always re-flash the esupport bios). I always
follow this procedure when flashing, may not apply to your mobo, but can't
do any harm whatsoever and will result in a 'clean' bios flash, print it out
and follow it;

1) Flash the new bios.
2) Unplug the power lead, wait for 5 mins for residual power to clear from
the psu and reset the cmos using the jumpers on mobo.
3) Start-up, enter bios and load optimised defaults.
4) Re-start, enter bios and change any settings you need.

This should give you a good starting point, I am thinking that maybe it has
something to do with the overlay software you used, even though you removed
it.
Have you tried starting from a boot floppy and running Fdisk? I'd try
resetting the mbr, run [Fdisk /mbr] from boot floppy, (re-start maybe
needed, not sure), then run Fdisk, delete all partitions and start again.

I'm not sure if Fdisk can sort it out, it's sort of a chicken and egg
problem, if you've already booted, (even from floppy), the bios has then
decided that this a 32GB drive, I think that Fdisk may see it as 32GB as
well.

Can you connect the new drive to another recent pc, that you definitely know
supports larger drives, and see what size it reports. If it shows 120GB
then it's your bios, if it shows 32GB then it's some remnant of the overlay
software.

I'm not familiar with Seagate's utilities, but if it is some remnant of the
overlay software, contact their support people, say you installed the DDO,
then removed it and the drive still reports as 32GB, even on a known
large-drive compatible system.

BTW this made me laugh, from your correspondence with esupport.

quote
Note: If you have trouble accessing our order page, try leaving the "s" off
the "https" in your browser window.
/quote

These esupport people must be f**king stupid, advising people that it's ok
to give their credit card details over a non-secure web page!!!!! I wonder
if you could sue them if your credit card got ripped off.

I'll keep looking around for ya.

HTH

--
Ian

On Fri, 11 Jun 2004 13:20:41 GMT, "Lago Jardin"
wrote:

Hi Ian

Yer i agree with u about paying for a BIOS flash. It was very much a last
resort having paid out for a 120G drive.
I saw the flash upgrade for my motherboard on Mercury's site but it only
contained minor fixes. In fact, there was a direct link from their website
to esupport who Mercury say now provide the latest flash upgrades for their
m/b. So the implication was that if u want the very latest u have to pay.

As I paid by credit card I can get a refund if i dont get it working. Ive
plenty of evidence from them that they guarantee 100% success. It may be a
rip off but i doubt it because of the number/speed of support emails they
have sent me. Having said that, it still doesn't work

Any idea why my BIOS (new and old) can see all of a 60G drive but only about
32G of a 120G drive.

Could there be any remnants of the DDO hanging around?

Thanks again for taking time to reply and ur help.

Nigel

1st,
Apollo suggested you clear the BIOS jumper after switching off and
isolating from the mains - this you must do to evidence the fact that
your BIOS flash does not contain any residual ****e from the previous
BIOS info. But . . . . before clearing the BIOS unplug all drives
including the one your having trouble with and re-boot so that the
BIOS finds no [ none ] drives.

2nd,
The Seagate ' tool ' did work ' for a few days ' so your BIOS was able
to see the whole drive. These various manufacturers can / do put a
hidden interpreter file in the boot sector and other places maybe of
the drive which is read on boot, though I have no experience of them
personally. Get, beg, borrow a bootable Partition Magic v8.0 or later
and get rid of anything that seagate or Fdisk has done to your drive.

Now what is the status ?

BoroLad

"Apollo" wrote in message
...

"Lago Jardin" wrote in message
. ..
Hi
Im not sure if its OK to post this here but its very tecky so I hope
someone
may be able to help me. Sorry if its a little off topic.

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

WTF, you don't pay for bios updates, ver 1.1a is available here;
http://snipurl.com/704h
This looks like the latest version available, I wish I could sell bios
updates by email, LOL.

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.

Demand a refund now, it doesn't work, and even if it did how are they
going
to know that you've got it installed. Get the FREE official bios from
Kobian and re-flash it anyway, it definately sounds like a bios issue, but
the fact that it recognises your 60GB drive is confusing.
I can't remember what sizes can give problems, but almost everything from
the last couple of years should recognise upto IIRC 138GB, then you need
LBA48 support (?) for drives larger than this.
If they've hacked around with the bios, even just to change the
description,
then I wouldn't trust it to be stable. There are people who hack bioses,
but they are competant programmers/hackers, and their efforts are
excellent.

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

Tell them that they are robbing *******s ;o)

On a more serious note, please don't take offence from my post it's just
that I've never heard of anyone paying for a bios, bios-chip perhaps after
corruption etc., but not a bios file freely available.

Try going into the bios, (hopefully the official 1.1b), and auto detecting
the drives again, or try setting it manually in the bios.

HTH

--
Ian

---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.703 / Virus Database: 459 - Release Date: 10/06/2004

Hi

The only m/b jumper i have is a clear CMOS jumper.

I understand the difference between BIOS & CMOS but do u think that i should
try ur idea but clear CMOS?

Thanks

Nigel

wrote in message
...
On Fri, 11 Jun 2004 13:20:41 GMT, "Lago Jardin"
wrote:

1st,
Apollo suggested you clear the BIOS jumper after switching off and
isolating from the mains - this you must do to evidence the fact that
your BIOS flash does not contain any residual ****e from the previous
BIOS info. But . . . . before clearing the BIOS unplug all drives
including the one your having trouble with and re-boot so that the
BIOS finds no [ none ] drives.

2nd,
The Seagate ' tool ' did work ' for a few days ' so your BIOS was able
to see the whole drive. These various manufacturers can / do put a
hidden interpreter file in the boot sector and other places maybe of
the drive which is read on boot, though I have no experience of them
personally. Get, beg, borrow a bootable Partition Magic v8.0 or later
and get rid of anything that seagate or Fdisk has done to your drive.

Now what is the status ?

BoroLad

/2004


---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.703 / Virus Database: 459 - Release Date: 10/06/2004

"Lago Jardin" wrote in message
. ..
Hi

The only m/b jumper i have is a clear CMOS jumper.

I understand the difference between BIOS & CMOS but do u think that i
should
try ur idea but clear CMOS?


Yes, flash the bios, then clear the cmos. The bios holds the mobo startup
programme and the cmos holds the settings and, as borolad says, info about
your hardware, ie drive heads/cylinders etc.

--
Ian

On Sat, 12 Jun 2004 10:53:33 +0100, "Apollo"
wrote:

"Lago Jardin" wrote in message
...
Hi

The only m/b jumper i have is a clear CMOS jumper.

I understand the difference between BIOS & CMOS but do u think that i
should try ur idea but clear CMOS?

Yes, flash the bios, then clear the cmos. The bios holds the mobo startup
programme and the cmos holds the settings and, as borolad says, info about
your hardware, ie drive heads/cylinders etc.

Cough !, don't ! [ again ] flash the CMOS / BIOS just ' clear ' it for
5_to_10 minutes whilst ' off mains '.

Let us know what happens please
BoroLad

Correct me please, you have already flashed the BIOS once - yes ?