hard drive size?

[Fox 3]

Hi there, i was wondering what determines the maximum hard drive size in a computer....i just installed an 80GB drive into what use to have a 6GB drive and now it will not boot at all, using either my windows disk or the WD HDD disk. Anything would be appreciated. Thanks.

[HyperTF]

Your file system which the Hard drive is formatted with can be a limiting factor but with your specs it (the Hard drive) should work fine... did you format with NTFS?

We can walk you through fixing this... hopefully ;)

Edit: Just explain to us what you have done up to this point with a bit more detail if you could thanks

[HAL9000]

How did you transfer the data from the 6GB to the 80?

[TennBikeBerk]

Aren't there sometimes OS restrictions?

[potassium19]

Is the system in your sig line what your putting this 80gig drive into? it says you have a 120gig already - did you put a partition on the 80?

[HyperTF]

Ahh, yes, I think we are looking at a much older system to what is in the signature... specs needed I think!!

[Fox 3]

sorry, yes it is an older system i'm playing with. OK, i took out the 6GB and literally replaced it with the 80GB, no transfer or anything.....had the WD start up disk in the cd rom and fired it up, it now just stays on the splash screen and doesn't allow me to do anything such as load into BIOS or format, etc. here is the system:

Acer V72MA motherboard
AMD K6-3D Processor
64 Mb RAM
WD 80GB HDD (hopefully)
Maxtor 6GB HDD (old and uninstalled)

Thanks again guys :)

[bailey]

I am just guessing here, but from what you say the spects are, I think maybe that system may have a max limit of a 8 gig hard drive, the bios may not support a drive any larger than that with out useing a bios overlay program, and I would not recommend doing that.

[HyperTF]

Hey I found some resources for your motherboard if you are working on it...

http://www.uktsupport.co.uk/acer/mb/v72ma.htm

And a great manual...
http://www.motherboards.org/files/manuals/424/V72ma-eng.pdf
Take note of Page 57 (I havent got time to read all of it sorry)

[potassium19]

I have not read the pdf manual, but I'd guess Bailey is right, a dynamic drive overlay is probably needed, and recommed staying within mobo limits or spend $100 on an asrock and 1.8gig celeron.

[Fox 3]

thx everyone for the responses. To answer your question, i don't really want to spend any money on this one, just kinda making it run for a friend. My biggest problem is that i cannot find the newest BIOS for my mobo. I would like to do anything possible to make this thing work without spending money on it (just what you wanted to hear eh? lol) i rella yjust want more space in it, that is all. Anyways if anyone knows where i can find the bios update for it, or maybe how to flash it?!? or even do the dynamic overlay program on it. Ok thanks again guys.

[glc]

Bailey probably hit the nail on the head - even if the bios does break the 8gb barrier, it's probably got a 32gb barrier.

A PCI IDE controller card is a much better option than a bios overlay. Bios overlays can slow the drive down and create instability. Here's one that's a good brand and reasonably cheap:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=16-102-002&depa=0

If you MUST do this without buying anything, you can use the WD install disk (it will install a bios overlay), but take very close note of the jumper settings. If you are using a standard 40 wire IDE cable and the drive is the only drive on the cable, you cannot jumper it to Master - you must remove the jumper completely. However, if this still hangs it, you must use the alternate jumper settings to limit the drive cylinders.

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=83&p_created=1005001469&p_sid=i-SEtXrh&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MTYmcF9zZWFyY2hfdHlwZT1zZWFyY2hfZm5sJnB fY2F0X2x2bDE9MTIzJnBfcGFnZT0xJnBfc2VhcmNoX3RleHQ9anVtcGVyIHNldHRpbmdz&p_li=

There is also a FDISK issue if you are using Win98 - there is a 64gb limit - and the WD software also can overcome this.

[Fox 3]

glc, I've said it once, and I'll say it again.....you are the man! thank you, I think that's the info I needed...I will keep you posted. (no pun intended) ;)

[Fox 3]

GLC, just to let you know everything went very smooth after the info you gave me...thanks a bunch.


cheers

[Kiwi]

This case may be solved by now, *but* there were plenty of Pentium-powered PCs around before there were CD drives priced low enough for regular inclusion in those PC systems. (I am having a Senior Moment in trying to recall how far back the K6's go.) After CD's first became popular, OS versions before W2K were published on CD's that do not include any boot sector because it was not yet common enough for the BIOSes to include any such option.

I have a couple of older systems (from 2000/2001 or so) that "Offer" a CMOS option to include CDD's in the boot-up sequence, and then never get around to actually doing anything *with* a bootable CD. They both do have semi- automatic Hard Drive recognition functions -- the user must go into setup and run the drive identification option for it to work (some newer BIOS routines seem to have omitted that necessity, but that ACER is older than the two I referred to by a couple of years at least).

It sounds to me as if Fox-3 wanted his friend's Acer to pick up the new drive and run with it without any pause in the setup first, to turn on the ID function and save it to the CMOS.

:o

[glc]

No, Fox-3 was trying to install an 80 gig hard drive in a system whose bios does not support extended LBA that high. It doesn't matter what you try to boot from, the excess cylinders in the hard drive translation causes the POST to hang unless you use the alternate jumpering to limit the drive to 1024 cylinders. Once you get it past that, you use the bios overlay to translate what the bios is actually seeing to the full capacity of the drive.

[Fox 3]

exactly....whatever glc said:)