Maxtor HDD Software 'MaxBlast' Experts needed

[gavin2k]

Anyone that has a Maxtor hard disk or is familar with its software may be able to help me - please read the following info below.

-- I know that not all of this may be totally relevant to my problem - however I believe in giving in as much as information as possible.

NB - I HAVE NOT ALTERED THE FLASH BIOS IN ANYWAY. ANYONE WITH A MAXTOR DRIVE MAY BE VERY HELPFUL TO MYSELF IN UNDERSTANDING MY PROBLEM.

I have been having some major serious problems with my PC over the last week or so. My windows installation messed up after I attempted to install the XP service pack 1 using the windows update. During this install I recieved at least 2 errors - these errors lead to a unbootable PC, the error message I decided to start a fresh on a brand new Maxtor 80gb hard drive purchased from Komplett.

I switched the IDE cables with the older Maxtor 10Gb drive, therefore making the 80Gb the master (boot) drive, and the 10Gb the secondary drive.

I proceeded to install Windows 2000 Professional on the new HDD, using the Maxtor 'MaxBlast' DOS software, I created 3 partitions on the 80Gb drive. 2 x NTFS and 1 x FAT32. I attempted to install Windows XP Professional again on a seperate partition on 2 occasions, each failed giving me a
'Unmountable_Boot_Volume' fatal error message (blue screen).

I the decided it would be best to delete both the unused partitions on the boot hard drive (80Gb hdd). My intention was to keep the C: as it was, orrectly installed with windows 2000 professional, while remove both the the other 2 partitions (1xNTFS, 1XFAT32).

Anyone that is familar with the MaxBlast 3 software will understand more of what happened next -
I proceeded to remove the two 'unwanted' partitions (neither had a os installed). Not being careful, I selected 'clear' instead of 'delete. However during this process it gave me an message and a confirmation alert in regards to changing something that resembled a serial number. It already had a set of numbers and characters there so I pressed next to confirm the steps of the process. Due to feeling I was having at the time (I was understandably very angry and pissed off with having so many windows related problems) I confirmed this option. Now this is where I have created the problem - I am not 100% sure what I did here as I didnt make any written notes of what was displayed on the screen.

I know believe what I did here has caused the BIOS/CMOS to recognise the wrong hard disk capacity.

After rebooting the machine, the hard drive now posts the wrong capacity in the Bios/Cmos. Both state the drive capacity is 32248 (32Gb), however the drive is 80Gb. I am unsure why this is, I can only think that my actions must have messed something up.
I know that there are lots of fixes for this problem in relation to Bios upgrades etc. However, I shouldn't need this as it was working fine beforehand on my PC, as NO changes to the Bios flash memory have been made. Is there anyway that I could have ruined the 'structure' of the HDD?

Although it doesn't post the correct size in the BIOS/CMOS - using the MaxBlast software it correctly states 81.9Gbytes. (roughly around the correct figure)

What have I done using the Maxtor 'MaxBlast' software, How can I get the BIOS/CMOS to recognise the full 80Gbytes. I do not want to use any Bios Updates - as I shouldn't need them, because the hdd was initially stating the correct size in the BIOS/CMOS and NO CHANGES have been made to the Flash Bios.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
G

PC SPEC:-
Duron 1.1Ghz, Jetway V266B Motherboard (Via KT266A Chipset), 640Mb SD-Ram (1x128 PC100, 1x512 PC133 - set to run@100Mhz), 2 x HDD (1x NEW Maxtor 80Gb 8mb cache drive, 1x OLD Maxtor 10Gb)
Motherboard - Bios Revision - v.v266B AO6 05-10-2002

http://www.jetway.com.tw/evisn/produ...266b/v266b.htm

[bailey]

personly I found the maxtor software is bad news

run fdisk, delet any and all partitions, reformat the drives
and start over, do not use the maxtor software.

get a w98 boot floppy and run fdisk from it

clean all the drives you have this way, you have already lost everything so it wont matter

then put which ever drive you want the o/s to be loaded on and install it, from there you can do the rest of the drives.

just my thoughts

there may be some other post on this, so wait and see what they have to say.

[gavin2k]

Wow!!
Thanks for such a quick reply!! If I get time I attempt your solution later on.

Thanks again - Still can't believe I've 'lost' 48Gb

Kind Regards

[gavin2k]

Whats the best way to run Fdisk?

Do I need to use a particular boot disk - My intentions are to partition the new 80Gb HDD into 3 partitions. 1 for Win2000, 1 for Windows XP, and another just for storage (maybe create this as FAT32).

Would it be ok to use a normal Win98 boot floppy or would this cause problems later on.

Thanks

[bailey]

I would use the w98 boot disk, you do not have to run it, just put it in the floppy drive and type fdisk.

just be sure that you have only one hard drive install at this time, the one you want to have the o/s installed on.

after you run fdisk, and creat the partitions you want, then you must have the first partition active, then you can reboot with the floppy in the drive and run it, then format each partition you made.
oh yes start it with cdrom support too.
then you can put the cd in and install the o/s
and follow the instruction on the screen.

[gavin2k]

Thanks - Do you reckon that this will 'fix' my problem and return the HDD capacity back to 80Gb in the BIOS/CMOS.

Do you have any knowledge or reason why you believe my HDD is now showing 32Gb when it was previously showing the correct size of 80Gb.

I know 100% that I have not touched the FlashBios, or messed with any of the Jumper settings on the hard disk - when I originally put it in (about a week ago) it recognised the correct capacity even though I didnt alter any of the jumper settings or perform an flash upgrade to the Bios.

[bailey]

it should

it may be something that the maxtor software did

[redbaron_snoopy]

If you intend for dual boot (win98 and XP), install win98 first then XP. XP will allow you to create new partitions for the OS and others. Using the win98 boot disk, clean up the drive and start over with just a single partition. Reboot and check if bios sees the whole drive again.

You can also create/adjust/delete partitions using Partition Magic after windows is installed without losing data or programs.

[gavin2k]

Sorry for all the posts - I am just very eager to fix my problem and your site does seem to be best I have come across site.

Would using the Maxtor 'MaxBlast III' software have the ability to have any negative effects in relation to the hard drive only. For instance, could my actions with this program had irreversible effects?

I say this - as I am fairly sure that something that I did in this program has prevented the BIOS/CMOS from recognising the correct size. As the previous thing before the BIOS recognising the wrong hdd capacity was using that software.

Thanks again,
Gavin

P.S Using the HDD Diagnostics Tool 'PowerMax' the hard disk does not state any errors. At least thats a good thing ;-)

[georgesltd56]

banned

[bailey]

which post do you want to continue this in I see that you are in the other one also

[kissfan]

Can I suggest that you nip into your BIOS and check that the HDD detection is set to AUTO, just in case the MAXBLAST software has changed any settings.