Bios problem with a big HDD

[Agafaster]

I have a Viglen P3/450 I recently had to replace the hard disk on - its the kids PC, not mine! The smallest disk I could find was an 80GB PATA. unfortunately, the BIOS (award IIRC - its at home, I'm not !) didnt recognise it, and I had to jumper the HDD down - via the '32GB clip' jumper setting. now I have 48GB thats doing nowt !

is there something I can do in the interim before I get round to upgrading to a more modern mobo ?

If I attempt to install Debian 4.0 Etch Linux (off a DVD I have), will it see what the BIOS doesnt ?

Can I reflash to a more modern BIOS or summat ?

Ta !

[meega]

Agafaster wrote:
 now I have 48GB thats doing nowt !

is there something I can do in the interim before I get round to upgrading to a more modern mobo ?

You can send that 48GB to me Aga. :lol:

[Homer]

I remember that the hard drive manufacturers used to do extra software for mobo's that couldn't see the full size of the drive. Certainly worth a look (unless as you state there is already a BIOS update that covers this issue).

[Zac67]

Two options:
- either get an updated (manufacturer)/patched BIOS
- use disk manager style software (usually from HDD manufacturer) that works around the BIOS bug

[Oliver]

Quite often, BIOS updates can take care of that issue. It depends on the manufacturer though.

Linux may be able to see the whole disk (not sure though), but I think a lot of boot loaders can only access what the BIOS reports.

[Agafaster]

meega wrote:

Agafaster wrote:
 now I have 48GB thats doing nowt !

is there something I can do in the interim before I get round to upgrading to a more modern mobo ?

You can send that 48GB to me Aga. :lol:

Meega mate, if I could, I would.


At a price of course ! ;-)

[Agafaster]

Oliver wrote:
Quite often, BIOS updates can take care of that issue. It depends on the manufacturer though.

Linux may be able to see the whole disk (not sure though), but I think a lot of boot loaders can only access what the BIOS reports.

still, that would be no different to when we were first installing Debian on A1's using RDB schema - I just put the boot partition in the lower 32 gig, surely ?

I'll see if Viglen, or the BIOS peeps have ote.

Thanks all !

[Oliver]

Agafaster wrote:I just put the boot partition in the lower 32 gig, surely ?

Quite right. Just something to be aware of. You could try a live CD, and check if your partition manager can access the whole disk.

[Invisix]

I'm not quite sure if this software will work on such a large HDD, but have you ever tried EZ-Drive? You can also look for MaxBlast which is an OEM relabled EZ-Drive software that shipped with Maxtor hard drives. What it does is create an overlay that bypasses the BIOS limitations. I would send you a copy, but alas this modern day PC doesn't have a floppy drive (damn modern day non-legacy supporting PC's grrrr!)

Alternatively you can buy an ATA-xxx (xxx denotes the ATA speed of the hard drive) adapter card that fits in a PCI slot. Those also provide large hard drive support for systems with BIOS limiations.

[Ferry]

@agafaster

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/

Saluditos,

Ferrán.