Trouble with my new HDD

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I just aquired a new 160GB drive and have installed in on my computer, and it is unavailable. I set it to primary slave in the BIOS settings, but it still doesn't show up in the 'My Computer' menu.

I installed Partition Magic, and wanted to format it as an NTSF particion of 160GB, but to my horror the device is shown as having only 32.247,6 MB.

PS: I got my comp to find the HDD, and now it is even in the My Computer menu. Point is, it still only has 32 GB, 20% of the drive volume.
I found out that Win2000 has generally some problems recognising larger drives. Not so much more. I have SP4, and my Motherboard is from last spring, so it is new enough to recognise large drives.

[ September 05, 2007, 00:11: Message edited by: Ragusa ]

 

Now now... there are people who use an OS that works until their hardware stops supporting it.

There are several multi-million dollar machines at my work that are running Windows 95, and the equipment I use runs on DOS. It's old, it's slow...but it *works*. Those pieces of equipment with the old OSes are the one's that don't have software issues. It's the computers and equipment that are running 2000, 2003 Server, and XP that are constantly going down.

The point is, 2000 might be old, but for some it works just fine. When I upgraded from 2000 to XP, I had a very hard time convincing myself that I needed to.

 

It sounds to me like the drive still needs formatted. When installing new hard drives, you should format them and then defrag them before use; especially with Win2k.

To format, if it's not so easy as to right-click "Format" then you might want to try doing it in DOS Prompt or "Safe Mode". I would suggest DOS Prompt.

I run Win2k and I have the option of running WinXP as well. I find Win2k to be a better build. I always seem to have problems with WinXP such as random crashes and programs acting funky. But to each their own.

 

I've installed Win2k SP3 on a 120 GB SATA drive with absolutely no problems whatsoever.

Formatting in safe mode definitively is the way to go. Don't forget the defrag too.

BTW, Primary slave...? If the primary master if another HD, you'd better off putting one as Primary Master and the other as Secondary Master.

Win2k might be older than XP, but 2k is rock-solid. I hated XP and all it's funks so bad that I prefered running a 2k/98 (for the older programs) dual boot instead of keeping XP - before I moved on to Linux, and since a little while, BSD.

You don't need XP.

 

See, I know Win2k, it works flawless and it has no quirks. I normally don't need to ask people for help to fix any trouble with Win2K. Besides, I don't have a legit WinXP version. I know it from work, it's hmm-ok, and I think about upgrading for compatibility sooner rather than later, but that's another story.

And that aisde, I tried the fix you mentioned, Tal, and it just doesn't seem to work.

Weird is that my primary HDD is 80GB, and that one is being recognised without problems. It has one 10GB partition for the OS, in FAT32, and a 70GB partition in NTSF.

It's the second one that isn't. I want to format it all in NTSF. I agree that probably the DOS prompt is a great idea, but what program am I to use? FDISK or some similar tool?

 

I'm assuming you are talking about an (old) ata device instead of the newer sata devices, since sata devices don't have master-slave configurations.

You said you put it as primary slave in the bios. To me this sounds like the bios didn't assign it that position. What position was it assigned originally? Does it work better if it is reassigned that position?

Normally the position of the drive is determined by hardware, not by bios. So you should check to what position the jumper on your hdd is set. Normally it should have three possible positions: master, slave and automatic. In automatic it determines its position based on which of the connectors of the ata cable is inserted in it.

Normally you should have three connectors: blue and black at extremities and grey in the middle. Blue is for the motherboard. Black is for the master. Blue is for the slave. However this is only important if your devices are set for cable select (automatic). The connector on the motherboard defines whether we're talking about primary or secondary.

Now you might know all this, but I prefer to still clarify it, in case you didn't.

I don't agree. The reasoning behind putting stuff on primary and secondary is for contention reasons when accessing the devices. As such it is more important to have your other devices like cd/dvd-station in your secondary slots. You will probably have more simultaneous accessing of your hdd combined with the cd/dvd-station than between the two hdd.

For primary secondary configuration, just look from where to where you copy most stuff (installs are also copies) and put those opposite each other. Also, unless the bios of your pc allows differently (like mine) you should always put the bootup hdd as your primary master.

 

If memory serves, you can also use the Win2k install disk to format the drive. Do it that way if at all possible.

 

Haha! It works! The disc is formatting now. Now what was wrong?

1. The slave jumper setting of the Samsung SP1634N HDD, for some odd reason, also was the 'limit capacity to 32 GB' jumper setting. Silly of me, not to notice that.

2. I then decided to set the drives to cable select to avoid that.

3. I was tired of yesterdays futile fishing for info on the web, and unplugged my functioning HDD, leaving the new one plugged in, and inserted my Win2K CD. I re-set BIOS to boot with CD-ROM first, and reset.

4. The Win2K setup correctly recognised an unassigned HDD of the almost the correct size, 128 MB, and allowed me to create logical drives and to format them.

5. When I then set back the BIOS I was able to choose which HDD I'd like to boot with. Sweet. My old OS recognised the full volume of 160 GB. I had run the patch Tal mentioned yesterday night. Probably that contributed to it. I then re-arranged the unassigned space with the Disk Manager.

Alas, I do have a new Windows on my new HDD now, but that's easily formatted away again. I can now move my data on the new drive and I will go to bed tonight early (relatively speaking), in much less sullen a mood than yesterday. Thanks for everyone helping!

 

LOL!

Out of curiosity I looked up the pin settings for your hdd. First slot is very logically the master jumper. The third is also logically the cable select jumper. However, the second is NOT the slave jumper, but like you said, the limitor jumper. However, slave is basically no jumper, so slave is the default setting for the hdd. Which in turn is illogical, since most drives have as default cable select. Oh well, I'll keep with my nice logical maxtors.

PS Is it as noiceless as the description samsung gives it?

 

It's very quiet.

Besides, the best part is that it has, in mall relief letters, written SL (not) on the cover over the pins, just as it has MA for the master jumper setting and CS for cable select. That's what I looked for

· · ·
· · ·
MSC
A L S

 

We had a bad "batch" (about 200,000) of Maxtor hard drives at work once. They would crash out and wouldn't even take to recloning. I don't trust Maxtor anymore after that.

 

Well, mileage may vary on hardware. I had people almost declare me crazy for sticking with msi over the more expensive asus, which supposedly is more trustable. However, I never encountered any issue. On the other hand I'm very dissatisfied with Maxtor's external (usb) hdds. They are very clumsy and noisy. The clumsy was a tradeoff I conciously made to save money, however the noice is bothering, especially as the comp is standing in my bedroom.

I'm still unsure whether I'm going to build a new comp, buy a laptop or just stick it out with what I have for a while yet. But if I build a new one, I will pay alot more attention to noise. It is much more important than I imagined. Hence the question about the noise prior.

 

I own an Athlon XP 3000+, with an AGP GF6800, 2 GB RAM, and now two decent Samsung IDE HDDs. Gaming performance is adequate for NWN2, but what irks me is future games.

So it's the old gamer's dilemma: My comp is still adequate, but obsolete. My choices are to (a) buy the last and best of the AGP cards to delay the inevitable (b) getting myself an entirely new system with SATA, PCI-E etc.

I don't like (b) all that much, and (a) doesn't strike me as particularly wise as well. Point, of course, is money. Anyway, as for now, I can comfortably live with the status quo

 

A is a no go. The newest games are already asking for dual-core processors. As such option a is just a waste of money, since it will not enable your system to play that many games more.

I'm facing a similar choice: (a) keeping my comp which is noisy and inappropriate for newer games (athlon xp 1800+ (can't even run nwn2), 1,5 GB ram and a recent geforce7) but otherwise still runs very fine (b) compose a new system (I have in mind a noiseless system of my own composition) (c) buy a laptop (though in that case I'd have to sacrifice the gaming potential to be able to take an affordable model)