Instaling New Hard Drive

[kmbrln2]

I have installed a new western digital hard drive.......when I power it up I get a blue screen...BIOS Setup Utility....

I'm lost and stuck.

Help!

Thanks,
Larry

[edrod13]

Could you tell us where you are at in the install process. Have you formatted the drive? what OS do you plan on using.

Edrod13

[kmbrln2]

No i have not formatted the drive, I was told to install the hard drive and place the floppydisk in supplied by western digital and it would work me through it all......however, when I booted up I go directly to the BIOS Setup Utility screen.

I am going to install win 98 SE

[edrod13]

Well then use a win98 boot disk and format the drive using the FDISK command. When in FDISK, create partitions you desire and then exit the utility to run a format. Once you have run a format you will be ready to install win98.

I think what you are going into is the Western Digital Lifeguard utility and not your bios setup. I prefer to format my drives using FDISK instead of using the manufactures utilities, but again this is my preference but you can use whatever you would like.

Since you have not formatted we should begin with how big is your drive and do you plan on having separate partitions or are you going to leave it as one big drive? Once you give us this info we could tell you the required steps you will need to perform to install 98. HTH

Edrod13

[kmbrln2]

It's 120 and I am just leaving it as 1 partition.

[kmbrln2]

you are correct about using a Data Lifeguard Tools.....but why didn't it load to that when I had it placed in the floppy? It said it would, but nothing works like it's suppose to for me...they always make it sound so simple..LOL

[edrod13]

Looks like your bios is set to scan other devices first. When prompted to enter bios go in there and set your first boot device to floppy. I usually set them up FLOPPY/CDROM/HDD so you might want to do that so it will scan your floppy drive. Also you did not mention the size of your drive and how many partitions you wanted on it.

Edrod13

[Nuclear Krusader]

Make yourself a favor and make at least two partitions. This has many many advantages.

[edrod13]

I would consider partitioning the drive becuase I think windows 98 has a 65GB limitiation or somewhere very close to there. Also windows 98 is roughly about 280-350 MB so just imagine what running a defrag on that 65GB partition would be like. At this point I would see if your motherboard has a drive capacity limitation also so that way you will not run into conflicts during the install. I usually set up my C:\ drive with about 10GB and then break the drive up into 20GB partitions or so for music, photos, school work etcc. Let us know what type of motherbaord you are using and at this point you might want to consider using the Data lifeguard just to partition the drive since FDISK could take a while.

Edrod13

[edrod13]

Saludos NUK. Its been a while since we have been on the same thread.

[Nuclear Krusader]

Yup, Edrod. ¿Cómo has estado? :)

[edrod13]

Bien gracias. Aqui nomas dando lata. Bueno mi amigo por hoy pienso que me voy a retirar.

Edrod13

[Nuclear Krusader]

Cool.

[glc]

If it's a 120 gig drive and you are going to use Win98, you should use the WD utility to set the drive up. Win98 's FDISK has problems with drives over 64gb. Just make sure your bios is set to boot from floppy first and have a Win98 startup disk ready because the WD setup will ask for it at the appropriate time. The correct utility to use is Data Lifeguard Tools 10.0, download it if you have to.

Note that if you were to use fdisk and format, it will take about 2 hours to format a 120 gig drive on a fast (like a 2.4 GHz) computer - longer on slower ones. The WD utility can format it a lot faster.

If this is an older machine, there's a good chance that the system bios can't handle a 120 gig drive, and you will have to use the WD utility to install EZ-Bios (not recommended) or use a PCI controller card.

How about some specs on this computer? This will help us advise you better.