abit bh6 -- problems with drives over 10 gb??

[Fuzzy]

Please help, trying to get this system together....

I have an Abit BH6 ver 1.01, it's been flashed to the latest SS bios, per the docs on Abit's website it supposedly have been tested to see at least 40GB drive.

I have two drives, both are Western Digital Caviar, one is a 13GB and the other 45GB, both are ultra 66.

I plug in the drive (and I think the bh6 is ultra 33 capable) and I can't see either drive! The bios will not identify it...I've tried using Western Digital's EZBIOS and set the bh6 to a "Type 9" drive like the instruction say, and it still wont identify it. Using Wester Digital's EZBIOS setup disk, I was able to see the two drives and also format/partition/install the bios on them.

I then thought it must be the bh6's bios, I then went out and bought a Promise Ultra 66 PCI IDE card...and plugged the two drives on that. It saw the drives, I was able to install Windows 98 and Windows ME on them, but the Promise card driver keeps showing up as not having been loaded...after looking at the bootlog.txt it shows that the ultra.mpd file did not load up. I checked the \windows\iosubsys and ultra.mpd was there, but according to the bootlog it failed during the load....the promise bios shows (during boot up) showed that it identified the drives and also set them to ultra66 mode....


About ready to give up....anyone have any suggestion on either getting the BH6 to see the two drives (in ultra33) or getting the promise card to work??? Anyhelp would be appreciated.

 

[TonyH]

I personally didn't have much luck with SS bios.
I ended up staying with the NV running a celery 300a@450. The drives installed were a Maxtor 20gb & 15gb. Both are ultra 66 5400 rpm drives.
I'm not sure why your WD's aren't being seen by the bios. You might try the NV, it has an update for the large drive support.
Just an idea.

 

[TonyH]

Forum was down for a few minutes and it updated with all three of my attempts at posting.

 

[TonyH]

Edited too. I don't think anybody needs my babbling in triplicate.:Q

 

[Fuzzy]

you're babbling is much appreciated!

I think I have tried the NV route and it didn't help, but I will try again and will let you know. thanks for your help!

any other suggestions? TIA

 

[KR]

Just spent some time with a friend getting his WD drives to be recognized.

In his case, he had jumpered something wrong and ended up with a conflict between the Hard Drive and a Zip Drive.

Finally had him unplug all drives, then connected just one hard drive as the master on IDE1 and his CDROM as Master on IDE2. Everything was immediately recognized and came up great.

I'll suggest the same in your case. Install only one drive at a time, as master on IDE1 and see if the Bios will autodetect - if it does, fdisk and format from the windows98 start-up and allow large disk support when asked or you'll be limited in partition/disk size.

Does the bios detect the drive's presence at all? Seems like if your'e able to run the WD ezdrive stuff the drive is being recognized by the bios. You won't be able to access the drive at all if it's not being seen by the bios.

Also, make sure you're using at least a win98 start-up disk (win95 SR1 is ok too, it has FAT32) to support larger partition sizes with FAT32.

 

[Fuzzy]

KR,

The drive is not seen by the motherboard bios at all. If use the WD BIOS program, it does see the hard drive....the bh6 doesn't see it.

Did you have to do anything else to the WD drive for the abit board to see it? And does it come up identifed in the motherboard bios?

thanks.

 

[KR]

After eliminating the conflict, setting the standard configuration page to "AUTO" for all the IDE drives allowed the bios to detect the drive. Have you tried this?

 

[Fuzzy]

Here's what I currently have on this BH6:

Voodoo3-2000 AGP
3Com 590 network card

Then I plugged in the 13GB Western Digital Caviar drive. The BIOS is set to auto identify the harddrive...still nothing.

It basically says "NONE" for the hard drive and then it asks for a bootable floppy. If I boot to a bootable floppy (a win98 startup floppy), I can't see drive C: at all.

Man this is getting frustrating! I tried the 13GB hard drive on a Toshiba desktop (w/ a Toshiba MB) and it came up fine, I formatted it, did a sys d: on it and then plugged it back to the ABIT board, and then nada....

I plugged in a 4.3 GB Maxtor drive and that comes up, I can boot from it, load Windows on it, everything....it seems like it just has trouble with either the 13GB or 45GB. Both of these drives are ultra 66 and I think they are backward ultra 33 compatible. From the manual and web site, the abit is ultra 33 right?

 

[KR]

I took a look at the WD site and one thing you need to check is the jumper setting -

The drive has different jumper platforms - a 9 pin or a 10 pin platform.

Alos, the jumpering is different when the drive is a master in a single drive system and a two drive system (this really means on or two drives on the IDE cable the drive is connected to) This can be very confusing. Jumper the drive to be the MASTER on a SINGLE DRIVE system and connect it to IDE1. Connect only your CDROM as MASTER on IDE2

Check the Integrated Peripherals page of the bios to see that ALL IDE channels and UDMA channels are Enabled/AUTO

Save the cmos and it should work.

 

[KR]

Oops - double double

 

[Jhhnn]

I just installed a WD20gig drive in my son's BH6, it has some older bios version, but did not require the EZBIOS overlay, and is ATA33.

I take it that you are trying to do a fresh install rather than a transfer, so try this:

Install both drives on IDE 1, the connector closest to the memory, and configure them as master and slave as you prefer. Only use master/slave settings if you have two drives on a cable, otherwise use single.

insert the WD disk, boot to the bios, go to HDD detection, use AUTO, and where it says "skip?(N)", change it to (Y), hit ENTER, and it will detect the master, then do the same for the other drive(s) in turn. The BH6 bios is confusing here, if you leave it on (N), it just goes on by, doesn't recognize the drive. Save&exit bios, let the WD disk boot, follow the instructions.

If the CMOS won't hold your settings, you have a dead battery, or the clear cmos jumper is in the wrong position maybe.