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80 Gig HD, FAT32 or BIOS problem or what??

  • 15-11-2002 06:33PM
    #1
    Blade
    Moderators, Business & Finance Moderators, Music Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators Posts: 4,502 Mod ✭✭✭✭


    I just got the seagate 80 gig HD from komplett which I'm adding on as a second drive not bootable and I can't get the thing going on my system. I've an abit bh6 board with a celery 566 clocked to 850 on win 98. The drive detects ok in the bios and reports it correctly. It says on the drive to use the online wizard on the seagate site to setup and format the drive etc so I thought that sounded easier than doin it through fdisk and I gave it a shot. The wizard saw the drive and asked did I want to partition it and what file system I wanted. With my other drives being FAT32 I thought I'd stick to that and I also choose to partition the drive into 2x 40gig parts. Anyway the software did it's thing and came back in seconds and said that everything was done including formatting. Last time I formatted a drive it took ages, have they gone that fast now to format in seconds?. Anyway it asked me to reboot and when I did the machine refused to post. No matter what I do now once that drive is connected I can't get passed the 'verifying dmi pool data'. I can't even boot up off the windows cd. I don't have a floppy drive but it wouldn't boot off that either anyway. Once I disconnect it the system works fine with the old bootable drive.

    I later read on the abit site that win98 won't format partitions larger than 32 gigs in FAT32 so I'm thinking it's a file system problem cause I made mine 2x40 gigs in FAT32 on 98! However why the hell didn't the seagate online wizard warn me when I choose those options that they wouldn't work on 98? I mean FFS they should even have detected I was using 98 and refused to do it if that is the case. It also listed loads of other OS's that had this limitation:

    http://www.abit.com.tw/abitweb/webjsp/english/faq_letter.jsp?pDate=2002%2F03%2F20&pQUESTION=Why+can%27t+I+format+a+FAT32+volume+larger+than+32GB%3F+%3Cbr%3E+%0D%0AIs+this+a+limitation+of+FAT32+File+System%3F

    I don't think it's the BIOS cause I just flashed it to the latest and still no joy. Theres also a jumper on the drive to force its size limit to 32 Gigs, that still had no effect. The abit site though doesn't show my model in it's list of boards that have been tested and worked with 80 gig drives but it didn't say that it wouldn't work either. It listed the bh6 v1.1 alright but thats a different AFAIK cause theres different bios updates for each.

    I appear to be stuck in a situation where I'm going to have to find someone with a new machine and an OS that isn't listed on the link above and perhaps try reformat it into 20 gig partitions and hope that works. Or has anyone any better ideas or know exactly what the problem is?

    Please help me! :)

    Blade


Comments

  • #2
    sutty
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,017 ✭✭✭sutty


    blade, make sure that the drive you want as the bootable one is set to master. Then set the other one to slave, or master of the second channel. Boot up off a win98 floppy boot disk (make sure that the BIOS is set to boot of floppy only.. no hard drives). use Fdisk to delete the partitions. Then try making 3 partitsions, 30gigx2 and a 20gig (well the remeander)

    If it is still not booting after you made sure of its master/slave setting, try set it to cable salect. See if that does anything for your drive...


  • #3
    Blade
    Moderators, Business & Finance Moderators, Music Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators Posts: 4,502 Mod ✭✭✭✭Blade


    Hi Sutty,

    The bootable drive is actually a scsi on it's own controller, so the 80 gig is a master on it's own on an ide controller. I've master and slave cdrom/dvd drives alright. It's not that. Also I've no damn floppy drive but do you think it's possible to boot up at all even with a floppy? I mean I've told the machine to boot off the bootable HD and it still hangs. I've tried booting off a windows cd, same thing no joy. I doesn't even get passed the verifying dmi pool data so I can't even hit f8 to bring up the menu to boot into Dos. Is a floppy drive any different to booting from cd?


  • #4
    BigEejit
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,738 ✭✭✭BigEejit


    One other thing to keep in mind is that some mobos want you to use different connectors on the ide cable .... i.e. a master drive must be at the end of the ide cable ... If you have a mate that has partition magic get him/her to make disks for you .. (2 disks, one is OS the other is partition magic)


  • #5
    Blade
    Moderators, Business & Finance Moderators, Music Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators Posts: 4,502 Mod ✭✭✭✭Blade


    I have her at the end of the cable alright, I'll try the middle one too but I doubt it'll work. My problem now is trying to boot up the machine with that drive connected. As I've said I tried both booting from cdrom and the other bootable drive. I would expect the floppy drive to be the same but hopefully I'm wrong. If it can definatly be done I'll go into town and grab a floppy drive. I'm also hoping theres nothing wrong with the drive although the system recognised it and booted up ok before it was formatted (I presume wrongly).


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