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Thread ID: 40904 2003-12-23 07:06:00 larger hard drive in old computer Mike (15) Press F1
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202415 2003-12-23 07:06:00 My dad's boss has a K6-2 400Mhz machine... it has a 4gb and a 2gb, the 4gb we assume is faulty, so he went out and bought a 40gb drive. However we can't get it to detect in the bios... even if I enter in the settings manually there's no result (eg when the machine boots it pauses for about 30 seconds then it skips to the system settings screen (where no HDD is listed) and gives the old "No System Disk..." message.

My dad's much older Pentium 120 had no problem seeing the 20gb we stuck in there a year or so ago - is it likely that a 20gb would be found when the 40gb isn't?

Any other suggestions?

Mike.
Mike (15)
202416 2003-12-23 07:34:00 Its probably has the ~32gb limit. There should be a jumper on drive that will allow it to work by limiting the size to 32gb. bmason (508)
202417 2003-12-23 07:37:00 Yeah I thought about that... however I did also think that it might still be detected by the BIOS?

I'll suggest that to my dad...

Mike.
Mike (15)
202418 2003-12-23 07:41:00 I have recently installed a 40gb Western Digital drive in a an AMD K6-2 computer & had no problems. It is running Windows ME.
A couple of years ago I upgraded the BIOS on this machine so that it would run XP.
The drives are all set to "Auto"
I once had trouble with an invisible drive and discovered that the partition had been hudden.
If you boot on a floppy and load "Partition Magic" you will be able to see it and unhide it.
I presume that you have set the jumper ( slave or Master) and that the cable has the red stripe towards the power socket.
Mzee (158)
202419 2003-12-23 07:45:00 "load partition magic' .........well yes that MIGHT help but it'd cost a LOT more than goin and getting an 'ide controller card' (aka raid card)...........this will allow almost ANY system to recognize ANY drive of ANY size cause it bypasses the bios.............best thing you can try otherwise is to set the bios to defaults and or set the hard drive recognition in bios to 'auto'.......but a pci ide controller card will definitely work drcspy (146)
202420 2003-12-23 07:46:00 > I have recently installed a 40gb Western Digital
> drive in a an AMD K6-2 computer & had no problems.

40gb Western Digital in an AMD K6-2 - same here :)
Upgrading the BIOS might be a possibility, but that'll be left to be the absolute last resort I think :)

Mike.
Mike (15)
202421 2003-12-23 07:48:00 oh yep......another thing.............depending on what harddirve type you have bought go look on the makers website......eg www.seagate.com or www.maxtor.com etc ........they often have a free downloadable small program which will allow you to 'fool' the system so that the whole drive is recognized....... drcspy (146)
202422 2003-12-23 07:51:00 > but a pci ide controller card will definitely work

Do you guarantee that?

Mike.
Mike (15)
202423 2003-12-23 07:52:00 > oh yep......another thing.............depending on
> what harddirve type you have bought go look on the
> makers website......eg www.seagate.com or
> www.maxtor.com etc ........they often have a free
> downloadable small program which will allow you to
> 'fool' the system so that the whole drive is
> recognized.......

I can't get past the BIOS, so how would I get a program to run?

Mike.
Mike (15)
202424 2003-12-23 08:18:00 I'd say it starting to look like you might have to upgrade your bios, but that can be a tricky and risky thing to do in those older machines. Odin (227)
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