Large Hard Drive Not Recognized

[Alabama1234]

I have an old Panasonic CF-M32W5M laptop running Win 98. Just ruined the OEM Fujitsu 2 GB hard drive by dropping it. Got a 20 GB Toshiba replacement but BIOS won't recognize it. Panasonic says that BIOS will not recognize anything larger than 8-10 GB and that there is no upgrade to the BIOS. New drive works on my Dell desktop so I know it is OK. Any ideas about how to make the 20 GB drive work on the Panasonic because I would really like to have the extra space. Have ordered a 6 GB drive, just to be safe.

[EzyStvy]

Try running FDISK on it and create three 6gig partitions.

[Alabama1234]

I am willing to try that and will let you know if it works. I have already used FDISK to form 2 partitions but the primary was 15 GB. Thanks.

[Markoman01027]

you can also create 1 partition, and in Windows get a partitioning tool called partition magic and resize the partitions there.

[Alabama1234]

I repartitioned the drive to 3 6 GB partitions using my desktop and then formated each. I used format/s on C. I then loaded Win 98 (my laptop has an external CD and I must have Windows loaded to access the USB port), again using my desktop. Everything worked fine. When I moved the drive to my laptop I got the initial screen saying to press F1 for setup and immediately the screen changed to a picture with 3 parts. The upper section looked like the front of a floppy drive the middle part looked like a floppy and the bottom section was a series of squares labeled F1-F12. The floppy picture had an arrow moving from the floppy to the front of the drive and the series of blocks had two rows of two blinking arrows pointing toward the F1 square. When I hooked up the floppy drive with the start-up disk, the system started but instead of showing the hard drive installed and made Drive C the drive. Then it said that "Windows 98 has detected that drive C does not contain a valid FAT or FAT32 partition." It gave 3 causes and then said that diagnostic tools had been loaded onto Drive C. At the a>, fdisk got the response "No fixed disks present." This is exactly where I was before I did this repartition and reformat. Am I missing, or messing up, something? By the way, my old 2 GB hard drive is recognized but has so many damaged sectors that is is really worthless.

[glc]

Wait till the 6gb drive you ordered comes in.

[Alabama1234]

Unless someone gives me a way to make the 20 GB drive work, it looks like waiting until the new, smaller drive arrives is my only choice. Thanks to everyone who tried to help. At least we tried!

[glc]

The only way you can possibly make the 20 gig work is if the Toshiba drive had a cylinder limitation jumper setting (which it doesn't) and with a software bios overlay (which Toshiba does not offer either). It's not worth the hassle.

[MultiGroup]

Would it work/recognize the drive as an external drive in an enclosure?

[Alabama1234]

I don't have the means to try it as an external on the laptop. I'll just wait for the new drive to arrive. All is not lost. I can still use this drive as a 2nd drive on my Dell. Again, thanks for all the ideas and help. Sometimes things just don't work out like you plan!

[glc]

Yes, you can install the drive into a USB housing and use it as a portable drive. This would be a very good use for it.

This is a bit expensive, but a very good housing and it comes with excellent software.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=17-155-602&depa=0

[Alabama1234]

Interesting but would probably be easier to just install it in my desktop for now. I do appreciate the ideas and advice. Thanks.