I noticed this thread because I've experienced almost exactly the same scenario as you Nick. Through 'mugging up' on the web I realised there was some kind of HDD size limit stopping me installing a new 80GB Samsung drive. I too began to think the thing may be faulty fresh out of the box. I have upgraded the BIOS - or at least think I have - to no avail. I'm now suspect my attemt at the upgrade was not actually successful, as the result of plugging in the new HDD is the same. The BIOS doesn't seem to recognise it as 80GB or offer a greater choice than before. I'm not even sure what Cyl/Head/Sector combination to set manually, because Samsung haven't printed it on the case. I don't actually see how that can matter when the thing hasn't even been formatted so far. So hoe do I get to format it?
Any ideas form any of you will be really appreciated.
Hugh Price
Hello Hugh,
What is the make & model of your motherboard?
Or as much info as possible (if you are not sure).
Any PC manufactured in this century should be able to auto-detect an IDE harddisk.
First the HD must be setup in BIOS.
Then it is partitioned.
Then, it can be formatted.
So, tell us about your PC and I will attempt to confirm its capabilities, and doublecheck your BIOS situation for you :-)
Don't worry, we'll get your 80GB working!
Regards
Hello, all! I found your discussion while trying to research a similar problem I'm experiencing. I purchased a bare-bones kit with a via PM800 motherboard, a Maxtor HD, the recommended brand of RAM and a Pentium 4 processor. Although I was successfully able to get the computer running and loaded with XP, the barebones kit had a problem - it shut itself off from time to time, and the issue was neither the RAM or HD as far as various tech support folks or I could tell. Figuring the issue was the motherboard, I had a new kit sent to me. I pulled out the hardware from the original kit and installed it into the new kit (which had the same specs, since it was the same product). That's when the real troubles began. Now, neither kit recognizes my HD - not even the original kit that was functional (despite its narcolepsy)! Any advice on what to do? It would be fully appreciated!
Thanks, OGS, you're very reassuring. I set to last eve to try again to sort things out. In fact I succeeded, by my standards, quite well and have a computer with a new 32GB(ahem) HD, partitioned and formatted and with my new OS loaded. So I'm practically willing to leave it at that, but the thought of nearly 50GB of empty, lonely space on that HD hurts just a little.
The MB is a QDI going by the designation B1S2000 - it's not in front of me so I haven't a reference to it's exact model number handy. It's P6144BX from memory. The disk is a Samsung 'SP...' as mentioned. I have managed to load XP/Pro through partitioning the HD with fdisk via the DOS prompt, then setting the BIOS to 'boot from CD' and letting XP setup do the rest. Without a partition setup just hung. When I did partition it, XP didn't like the partition I created and insisted on me deleting it and doing it again at the start of setup. The only way to get BIOS to have anything to do with the hard drive, however, was to 'jump' the HD in the slot marked 'limit drive to 32GB'. Without that, no detection. I cannot say for sure that my BIOS upgrade has had any effect, although the QDI website where I found it mentioned it overcame an HDD size limit, might it have been referring to another limit? (8GB for instance- My previous drive was around that size?) Could it be worth looking out for other BIOS upgrades from other sources?
Yours and very many thanks for your greatly appreciated time.
A much happier if still perplexed,
Hugh Price
Hugh - Is this your motherboard?
http://www.qdigrp.com/qdisite/eng/products/bx1s2000.htm It appears to support DMA mode2, which means it has never heard of 80-pin HD connector...
This is a good candidate for the problems you describe.
There IS no other source for BIOS update.
What is the version of your BIOS now?
What version update do you (think you) have?
What version was it before you changed HD?
The most recent BIOS seems to be version 1.3 dated Jan.11/2000.
A previous BIOS version 1.1 (Dec.9/99) added support for 'large harddisk'.
So what's the problem here? 80GB is not that big a drive; 32GB is ridiculous :-)
Download the appropriate Award BIOS flash tool
http://www.qdigrp.com/qdisite/driver/AWDFLASH.EXE and the version 1.3 BIOS package
http://www.qdigrp.com/qdisite/driver/b1s2k_v13slrc.ZIP and flash that sucker, using a DOS bootdisk with no config.sys or autoexec.bat (this is what is known as 'real' mode).
The good news is, you MIGHT be able to both keep your XP install and gain access to the lost GBs.
XP could simply claim the new space from Disk Management, and give it a new volume 'D:'
But you may have a minor problem: your optical drive(s) will all need to be bounced down a letter.
No big deal, but a program installed from CD on D: will find the CD is now E: or whatever...
But you can deal with that if & when it happens.
Check all this out, and get back to us!
L8R
