Can one make 80Gig work on 30Gig Bios??

Greetings

1st Post...

Question? Is there a way to get an older ('99 model I think) computer to recognize the new 80 gig hard drive? ::

Background: I installed a 80gig WD in a HP Pavilion xt953. A 30gig came out of it. It appears that the 80 gig surpasses the 32gig maximum level that the bios recognizes from what I picked up at the WD site.

I got the drive formatted with the DataLifeGuard software I downloaded from WD. It allowed me to format the 80gigs as an option. I loaded the restore software and got to 2of3 disks. It told me “click here to restart” the computer after number restore disk two. I tried and the computer would not recognize the drive, could not find system software. I checked bios at startup and it shows it on the bio screen as 80gig and it lights up the hard drive light in seeking the operating system. When I boot from floppy, I can’t get it to see anything but A: drive

I got some hints from HP on changing jumper switches but they didn't help


If answer is: it won't work. Do you know a cheap source of a 30 gig or less hard drive.

Thanks
Mark

 

Have you downloaded the latest bios? http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareDownloadIndex?lc=en&lang=en&cc=us&os=228&product=59820&dlc=en&softwareitem=pv168en

If your Bios is detecting the drive, then there is not a limit on the Bios, since it is a newer machine.

The other drivers: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareList?dlc=en&lc=en&product=59820&lang=en&cc=us&os=228

And on that particular mboard there are no jumpers: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&lang=en&cc=us&softwareitem=pv168en&os=228&product=59820&dlc=en&docname=bph07170#N1485

Make sure the only jumper on the drive is the Master, and make sure that it is the only device on the Primary IDE cable, with the CD as the Master on the Secondary.

Then if putting XP on it, you should be fine. I do know that some of the older Restore disks looked for what devices where in the machine and halted if there where any changes, so what you ended up doing is creating multiple partitions.

 

Hi and welcome to MajorGeeks.

It sounds like your Bios has a limit of 37 GB.

You have several options, see if there is a Bios update, or if the hard drive manufacturer has any tools to bypass this.

Personally, I think the easiest way is to just partition the drive into sections 37GB or smaller.

 

The last bios update is the Santa Fe update, which I linked to in my post. The update is the same for the xt923 that I have, so an 80gb should work fine in his machine.

 

It doesn't mention anything about larger hard drive support, it just says "minimum BIOS requirements to run Windows(r) XP" and that it will "display the correct CPU".

Also, you say it's a newer machine, the author of this post says it's 5-6 years old!

 

It will handle the larger drives, just nothing larger then 100gb. My machine is the same age as his, it is from 1999. Since the Bios is recognizing it, it is as I stated, the restore CD's are the problem, due to most likely Win98 or WinME restore disks, which do not like anything then what came with the machine.

He should have no problems installing WinXP on it or even Linux. What he needs to do is pull the Cmos battery out to reset the bios, boot up and go into the Bios settings and Resetting it. Once done, reboot machine, go back into the bios and make sure that the Primary IDE is set for Auto, and the drive is shown, and on the Secondary the CD is shown as the Primary.

I have had the same problems when I installed the 80gb in mine, but once the Bios and Cmos where reset, no problems. Also have to make sure that the 80pin cable is used, not the 40pin that came with the machine.

 

I have no idea what you are on about.

If it's from 1999, how is it a newer machine as you state? In PC terms, it's a fossil.

Yes I agree if the Bios detects it then that's not the problem, but I don't understand the rest of your post.

Why is there a limit to 100 GB?

 

That particular machine will not recognize anything over 100gb, which is why I only put in a 80gb. As for being a Fossil, yes, but anything that we use nowdays are fossils.

 

Thanks Brownizs for this tip!
I've downloaded the bios and will attempt all that you have suggested to the best of my ability. Thanks too for the links on the pages, they were very informative. The notes on the SanteFe Update page said to load the update from a ME start-up disk. Since I don't have ME running now, I presume that I can load the bios update from A:> prompt. Also I only have my old ME disk for an opterating system right now for this computer. So I'll have to try to first work with that.
Mark

 

If you have a ME bootdisk, that should be fine. If not, you can go to http://bootdisk.com and download one. Once you get the Bios updated, that should work. It worked for mine when I upgraded the drive on mine before I got WinXP.

 

Thanks Brownizs:

Problems on boot disk.
I went to bootdisk.com and got a bootme.exe file for ME. It says on mouseover it's a self extractor file. I ran it and it told me to put in a clean floppy, I did so in A and it looked , but then it had a message that said:
"Floppy can't be acceded. Check another application. Don't use it.
Tried several times. Same with bootmec.exe.

I have an old dos boot disk that will give me a prompt, can I use it?

Thanks

Mark

 

You should be able to as long as it boots to DOS prompt. What tools are on the bootdisk you have?

 

Dear brownizs and Insomniac

SUCCESS! I used an old startup disk for mcafee scan and then loaded the bio I'd placed on a floppy from the download you gave me. I checked the listing first and saw my HP number. I had to make two attempts to load the bios.

On restart got the error message I expected and about configuration error, and went in and reset F5 default in the setup screen and f10 to save. Type C: and voila, 79+ Gig or so it reads.

Now to try my restore disks again.

Thank you very very much. And thanks to the MajorGeeks.com board!

Mark

 

Your welcome. Let's hope the Restore disks work. You can run XP on that machine, like I did, which now has a 80gb, 512mb in it and runs great. Of course the NIC has been changed to a 3Com, and added a USB1.0 2port in it also.

I have had no problems running Linux on that particular machine also.

 

Dear Brownizs

SUCCESS: I am writing from the reformed HP today with 74gigs available.

But at first it wouldn't start after loading, the same as before flashing. I went back and attemped again to create the ME disk from my download at bootdisk.com. This time it worked (I'll bet my floppy had hidden files on it or something and a new floppy did the trick). As I recall from last night, when I booted with the 1.4 floppy, it recognized the big drive and asked if I wanted to use it as such.... something about above 512 Meg. I said yes, the next thing it reported was that the drive did not have a FAT or FAT32, and recommended running FDISK.com (fixdisk?). I did so and chose to use the maximum available space for my partition. At first it appeared that it was only formatting 10.7gig, but when it was all comlete a DIR of c: showed 74+ gigs.

I then successfully reloaded the recovery disks and started the computer. I've updated from microsoft. Next step is to put on the AV and stuff you'all recommend. I am indeed idebted to you and MajorGeeks.com
Sincerely,
Mark