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Thread ID: 64992 2006-01-04 01:44:00 80-gig hard drive on an elderly motherboard - possible? bRaZZiN (2228) Press F1
Post ID Timestamp Content User
417900 2006-01-04 02:39:00 Ah. Yeah, actually I meant Cylinders when I said "Sectors" before. I suppose "Sectors" are what "Sec" stands for... I'm having a bad day. Any way to work out the "Cylinders" from the amount of "sectors" or something? bRaZZiN (2228)
417901 2006-01-04 02:41:00 Ah . Yeah, actually I meant Cylinders when I said "Sectors" before . I suppose "Sectors" are what "Sec" stands for . . . I'm having a bad day . Any way to work out the "Cylinders" from the amount of "sectors" or something?

There SHOULD be a sticker on top of the hdd with both sectors and cylinders on it, to tell you what numbers to put in, in the BIOS, if u do it manually .

Look on top of the hdd .

Is there a sticker with the sectors/cylinders info on it?
Speedy Gonzales (78)
417902 2006-01-04 02:48:00 ah. Yep. Cleverly disguised under the letters "C/H/S" - Cylinders, heads, sectors per cylinder - I suspect those are the numbers I need. In fact I just put them in, and the drive does seem to be working. FDISK is verifying the drive's integrity presently. fingers crossed, eh? bRaZZiN (2228)
417903 2006-01-04 02:51:00 ah. Yep. Cleverly disguised under the letters "C/H/S" - Cylinders, heads, sectors per cylinder - I suspect those are the numbers I need. In fact I just put them in, and the drive does seem to be working. FDISK is verifying the drive's integrity presently. fingers crossed, eh?

Thats the one lol. Yup soon find out whether you'll see the whole 80 GB.

Hopefully, you do!
Speedy Gonzales (78)
417904 2006-01-04 02:54:00 You've already discover the jumpers that set it to a 32 gig drive. That's their purpose in life: letting a new large drive work with an old BIOS.

As bartsdadhomer suggested, an IDE controller *might* work. Get the cheapest one you can find, since you're probably not interested in RAIDs or disk caches.

As mentioned, Promise Technology has a very good reputation; it's the one I'd try.
kingdragonfly (309)
417905 2006-01-04 03:07:00 HA . Wow, putting those magical numbers into the BIOS worked . I've booted into ME and it's reporting something like 78GB in My Computer before formatting . . . Brilliant, that's a bit closer to the 80 gigs I paid for .

Well that's made my day a lot better . Cheers everyone .

PS . this Jose Gonzalez character can be heard at http://www . bravia-advert . com - really, have a listen . And watch that ad, you know the one with the bouncy balls . Irrelevant? who cares MY HARD DRIVE WORKS yay
bRaZZiN (2228)
417906 2006-01-04 03:10:00 Good to hear it worked there Brazzin ! :thumbs: Speedy Gonzales (78)
417907 2006-01-04 03:32:00 cool, glad to see someone's havin a good day, well done bartsdadhomer (80)
417908 2006-01-04 03:44:00 The funny part is that those numbers you entered for C/H/S to make it work are all lies . :D

I can guarantee that you haven't got 16 heads reading and writing data . There will be 1 head which works only on the servo surface which does the head postioning . Then there will be 1 head for data on the other side of that platter plus two data heads for each other platter . There won't be as many as 7 . An 80 GB is most likely to have one or two platters (a 40MB IDE disk from 1990 had 3 platters, and 5 (+1) heads) . . The (probably) 64 number for sectors might be an (low) average . . . near the centre of the disk there are fewer sectors/track; towards the outside there are more . The number of tracks is probably a cheat in the low direction too . . . most new disks have many times 1023 tracks .

This is all done to maintain compatibility with a BIOS which was written to handle the earliest 5MB PC hard disks . ;) There are a fixed number of bits for each if those fields, and as the technology has changed the bits were fiddled to be able to access many more times the number of sectors on a disk . I've got a couple of 70 MFM disks which have 16 heads and 8 platters . They are "full height 5 . 25" drives" (Twice the size of a CD drive) . They don't have servo platters .

Most of this arithmetic is handled in the IDE board on the drive . IDE is a remarkably clever design . . . someone worked out that 40 wires would be enough . And it was . :cool:
Graham L (2)
417909 2006-01-14 04:44:00 Yea iv got the old Socket 7. I'm on holiday at the moment so the info might not b 100% accurate but I'l do my best. And it will only work if u no how many cylinders and heads and stuff. Enter the BIOS settings thng and into the first lot of setting u can change. There should be the time and all that other c**p bt it will have this table woth lots zeros and a few nones done da left hand side. since ur 80 gig is ur slave go dwn 2 primary slave row nd change the 'none' to 'user'. go across and enter al the info that u no and can edit (if u dnt no jt leave @ 0). Sonce you cant change the size it should change automatically once you've done. Try re booting nw and see what happens. If it doesnt work try changing the secondary slave and master.

O guys and by the way if it wrks tel every1 a 13 year managed to install ur hard drive

Ooops didnt realise uv fixed the probalem
matthewkeelty (9017)
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