Win2000 partitioning disk space

[stephenahayes]

I am loading W2000 onto new system with two 30G HD's IBM deskstar, on w2000 compatible list, they are detected by Bios, but when W2000 pro setup is ready to create partitions, it only shows 2016MB of unpartitioned space for each drive. I have Sys Admin book, etc about disk mgmt to design partitions, but no mention what to do if size does not match, or examples of numbers to expect to see, I tried using Bios to manually enter Cyl, HD, Sect info about the hard drives, save and exit, but next boot with w2000 still does not see more than 2016MB, Is this normal? Can anybody recommend site with better instructions to partition W2000? I tried Msoft site, but found no explanation of troubleshooting, or practical examples with numbers,
that give some direction when unexpected values show up.

[reboot]

It's probably normal.
I wouldn't use a 30 gig partition for anything anyhow.
How about cutting it up a bit, say 3 10 gig partitions, then just install to the first (reformatting to NTFS if you want) and using the other two for apps, data, etc.?

[lynchmob]

This may be of some help:
IBM DeskStar
Tried to look your problem up at IBM's support site but kept getting
404's.HTH
lynch
Just felt Reboot's feet run up my back-didnt see any replies

[stephenahayes]

Problem may be with BIOS chip or other part of MB not WIN2000, when I got this KA266 to boot up, two 30G HD's IBM deskstar, on w2000 compatible list, they (type) are detected by Bios, but only as 2114 MB , auto detect numbers come up as 4096 Cyl, 16 Head, 0 precomp, 4095 Landing Zone, and 63 sector,
Numbers from HDD case are 16383 Cyl, 16 HD, 63 Sec
when W2000 pro setup is ready to create partitions, it only shows 2016MB of unpartitioned space for each drive. I have Sys Admin book, etc about disk mgmt to design partitions, but no mention what to do if size does not match, or examples of numbers to expect to see, I tried using Bios to manually enter Cyl, HD, Sect info about the hard drives, save and exit, but next boot with w2000 still does not see more than 2016MB. It appears BIOS recognizes hard drive label, but not contents. This MB was delivered with BIOS chip in backward which I found during troubleshooting, maybe chip did not survive completely intact.

[stephenahayes]

hey Lynchmob, I went to IBM.com and downloaded two files Diskmanager 2000 and dynamic drive overlay ,that were supposed to help with formatting difficulties, I used the bootable diskette created from diskmanager to format my hard drives , FAT 32 , 4 partitions of about 7.8M on each , I tried the the second diskette and program (Dynamic drive overlay) loaded in memory, it is used to run a diagnostic on the whole system, but it will not exit gracefully. After you use it, when you reset, you must hit keys very quickly to boot from CD. After doing this and finally getting win2000 to boot from CD, it sees but would would not accept the partitions created by the IBM diskmanager program, I went thru the process again using regular FAT, 14 or 15- 2 MB partitions, win 2000 setup still won't accept the partitions created by IBM's program. it looks like IBM's program doesn't work with WIN 2000. I am reaally discouraged, since it takes hours to try all this stuff out and maybe win2000 is just impractical to use because no-one has worked out these issues. I will ask a office mate tomorrow to help, he has win98 and I will try it with the fat32 or fat16 partitions.

[garylyb]

I just put together an amd system with ata 100/ 30 gig drive from Western Digital.

The bios info was wrong, the bios won't recognoze the 100 meg ide channel. You have to install a special driver from the motherboard manufacturer ASUS in my case.

Gary

[wedor]

I recently built a system with a KK266 using 4 20 gig IBM's and Win2K, it worked fine. I also have a 60 gig in my own system with Win2K, again, no problems. I would highly recommend against the use of drive over-lays, they are not needed on newer systems anyway. It would seem that your problem is not in Win2K but hardware related. I would check the jumpers on the back of the drives to make sure they are configured correctly, they do have a setting that limits the recognizable size.

[stephenahayes]

thanks Wedor, I have tried the jumper setting for 16 logical head hard drive, the drives are now auto detected as 59560 Cyl, 16 head, landing zone 59559, and sec 63, capacity shows as 30740, win 2000 setup would not load successfully from CD rom, I have asked Iwill tech if 15 or 16 logical head archit.?
Will try 15 to see what happens. The jumper settings on IBM's web site explanation are better than sticker on drives, but still incomplete, no instructions on how to verify/troubleshoot.

[wedor]

Do you have the CD on it's own cable? or what configuration are you using?

[wedor]

And 16 head is the correct settings.

[stephenahayes]

thanks Wedor, the two hard drives are on one IDE cable,MB jumpered for non raid while I try to get the system up, they are both detected the DVD/CD and CDRW are on the second IDE channel, they are recognized OK and function. Could you please check your BIOS config entries for your drives, IDE Primary (auto or manual or none) and Access mode (CHS, LBA, Large, or Auto) and also what are the Capacity, cyl, HD, PRE-comp , LZ and Sectors reported.
It appears there is a discrep in numbers for cyl, etc reported by my BIOS,
sticker on hard drives indicate 16383 cyl, but auto detect reports 59560 for capacity of 30740 MB, if I change to manual and CHS , then change cyl to 16383, the capacity reported drops to 8.4GB. Selecting LBA, Large, etc change the cyl numbers down to lower range (3737 ex) but capacity still shows as 30739 MB. I'm not sure why BIOS is not calculating drive capacity and geometry the same as what appear on sticker on drives.

Also , after pre format drive w/FAT 32 as one drive using IBM's disk manager, Win2000 pro setup showed correct capacity , but then would not re-format and setup windows on it and boot from hard drive. Any info about your BIOs config and choices made during win2000 setup (partitioning method, ntfs, FAT, etc) would be appreciated.

[glc]

You should be able to autodetect everything and have it work. If you do have to mess with it, use LBA. The 16383 number is not the actual cylinder count, it's a translated count as handled by LBA. If the bios sees them as 30 gig drives using LBA, that's what you want. Make sure you don't have the cylinder limitation jumper enabled on the drives, and if you are using an 80 wire IDE cable you have to use the Cable Select jumpers and determine master/slave by the connectors (Blue to controller, black to master, gray to slave). You will have to press F6 when prompted during Win2000 setup to load the ATA66/100 driver.

[stephenahayes]

thanks glc, I tried to simplify the test setup. I removed one hard drive connection and also CDRW (I had two hard drives mast and slv on one IDE and MB in non-raid mode while trying to get it up the first time) and DVD/CD and CDRW on the other. This gave a simplified test setup of one HDD on IDE 0, One CD on IDE 1 and one FDD.
My office mate Charles dropped off a Maxtor 20G drive that I used sucessfully; BIOS IDE auto detection, created two partitions 10 and 9 GB, NTFS, and Win2000 loaded OK. This gave me confidence that the MB and system are good, now I am trying again with the IBM deskstars one at a time. I took your advice and jumpered for cable sel, When I contacted the Ontrack software company to try to remove their sw that came from IBM's web site, the advisor there showed me a trick to check the recognition of disk geometry by BIOS, it was not correct compared to Ontrack/IBM disk manager sw, using Auto on BIOs, it was 59k cyl should have been 3737 cyl X 255 hds X63 sectors so I changed to LBA access mode, showed 3737 cyl, and F10'd, and now have partitioning/loaded Win2000 again. These guys have two floppy bootable diskettes avail as downloads at IBM's web site that can be used when BIOs systems are having problems getting drives set up, but the part that showed disk geometry calculation was not accessible from normal menus. thanks for the advice!!

[Hpro]

Hi,
this just in case that you still can't access / configure your hard drive ..
If you look at the label of the hardrive then you will see that the actual number of Cylinder is 16'383 by 16 heads and 63 sectors..

All hard drives of more than 8.4 GB neverthless the Manufacturer using the XBios Int13H to access the drive beyond the 8.4gb disk barrier..

This is easy said a "Overlay on the Hard drive Controller Bios" itself not the Bios of the MOBO

Now, when you try to setup Win2k it will place the first section of it's setup on a RAM DRIVE - and not on the hard drive itself until you are asked where and on what drive or partition you like to setup Windows..if your CDROM can't complete this then it may be that it is in conflict with the hard drive itself -
A easy workaround will be to boot of a Win98 Bootable floppy with FDISK and also Format on the disk and then fdisk and format the drive to FAT32 first - make as many partitions you like or just keep it at one - then booting of the Win2k cdrom will will assure that the CDrom doesn't jump on to the C:\drive... this is a small bug on some systems..

Also be sure the the limitation jumper on the Drive is removed (I think GLC posted this already ) but just to make sure that you rechceck this one more time..

I hope this will help to get it working..

[stephenahayes]

yes, Wedor's advice about cable sel& LBA, confirmed by Ontrack tech support. LBA IDE access fixed the capacity/geometry translation problem, the explanation is found at http://wwww.storage.ibm.com/techsup/hddtech/dm2kwin.htm it's called the 528MB limitation, and explains why BIOS sometimes have problems translating or formatting. Afterwards W2000 pro could be set up on NTFS with 15G on primary partition and 14G on second. I am now up and running on one disk, working and burning CD's, etc. Since I have both DVD/CD and CDRW on one IDE port right now I am copying to HDD at 12X and 16X, then write to CDRW to avoid buff underrun. I will convert to RAID 0 config later,and maybe have DVD/CD and CDRW on separate IDE ports and see if that allows direct CD to CD without Under-run. I also use IWILL's (motherboard) BB for help with that process (string under RAID, by Cora7, new to RAID) they also have a good group there because integration bugs require inventive solutions.