Dell hdd puzzler

kmb

Hi Lads,
Friends dell 8300 wouldnt boot after a week or so after i put in a spare hdd,so i put on the second hdd a fresh xp install and went to look into old hdd but windows management and bios reports it as 120 gig which it is but if you right click and go properties it reads 10mb!!!
The icons in the drive are all wrong,its like years ago the effect of a bad ide cable or if you put a 160 gig in a computer with a 120 max before the famous LBA came outbut these are sata drives with replaced cables attempted.
Before i put xp on the second hdd i ran xp recovery fixboot & fixmbr but it was still wrong.Xp wouldnt even reinstall in this or second hdd if the hdd was connected.
Anyone know how to rebuld this to let me get info off without loss on original hdd.?
Now,thing is both hdds are seagate and 160 and 120 gig.

Basically bios and windows management show as 120 gig but when you go properties its 10mb.

Regds,

Kieran

kmb

It kinda looks like as if the 120gig was max for the chipset and when the 160 went in it corrupted it but the dell forums say lba was enabled early in the bios version and this one is at A07.

Does anyone have this 8300 with a greater hdd than 120 gig?

Funny enough the 160 didnt get corrupted.

regards,

Kieran

MDB

Stop wasting your time with old computers and buy a decent one

yoyo

kmb wrote: »

Hi Lads,
Friends dell 8300 wouldnt boot after a week or so after i put in a spare hdd,so i put on the second hdd a fresh xp install and went to look into old hdd but windows management and bios reports it as 120 gig which it is but if you right click and go properties it reads 10mb!!!
The icons in the drive are all wrong,its like years ago the effect of a bad ide cable or if you put a 160 gig in a computer with a 120 max before the famous LBA came outbut these are sata drives with replaced cables attempted.
Before i put xp on the second hdd i ran xp recovery fixboot & fixmbr but it was still wrong.Xp wouldnt even reinstall in this or second hdd if the hdd was connected.
Anyone know how to rebuld this to let me get info off without loss on original hdd.?
Now,thing is both hdds are seagate and 160 and 120 gig.

Basically bios and windows management show as 120 gig but when you go properties its 10mb.

Regds,

Kieran

Did you jumper the hard drive to run in sata1 mode? From reading your post your using SATA hard drive? Some older SATA1 mobos will require the SATA1 jumper present to work properly

Nick

kmb

Hi,Its the existing hard drive that went faulty.Ie the one shipped with the comp 5 years ago.

The sata2 drive seems to work grand and according to dell forums it will run the sata 2 with backwards compatibility though i know i did use a jumper on my 500 gig sata 2 on my old msi neo plat board.

I have the original seagate software which i got from seagate and even this wont work in dos,just hangs as it tries to recognise it.
Xp cd wont load neither when it gets to formatting,its really strange.

I have just given up and passed the comp back to friend with windows and all patches applied.
Just thinking would the old fdisk sort it as it had i think a 120 gig max lba.
I also doubt i could get low format done as it wasnt picked up in the seagate software even though it shows in computer management in xp windows under storage.

Ah shag it,wont bother,not worth the hassle.

Thanks for coming back to me,

Regards,
Kieran

MunsterCycling

Kieran, try putting into another machine other than it's original. If not able to get it to work PM me and I'll see what I can do with it!

MC