Arggh!!! IBM 45 GB 75GXP IS seen by by BIOS but not DOS/Windows. :(

[Eug]

IBM 45 GB 75GXP is seen by by BIOS but not DOS/Windows.

It's seen as 45 GB and if I use clip mode it is seen as 32 GB as expected by the BIOS. This is during boot up. However, I cannot see it with fdisk or with Win 98 or Win 2000. Very irritating. :|

It is on a Promise Ultra66 with an ATA66 cable and is configured as master alone as the D drive. My IBM 34GXP 20 GB works fine as the C drive, also on the Ultra 66.

Help!

The Quantum 10 GB drive is working fine as the D, configured as master as well.

Asus P2B, latest BIOS. (BX) In the meantime I'll trying normoclocking, but I doubt that'll do anything.

:|:|:|:|:|:

 

[shawn_16]

try using the maxblast or something software

 

[bonkers325]

use a diskmanager prog by ibm

cheers,
bonkers325

 

[rmblam]

I doubt this is it but, make sure you don't have that IDE channel disabled in windows. I disabled the unused secondary once and had the same thing happen later on. WTF where is the drive? Oh yeah?!?

 

[Eug]

OK I ripped out the Promise card and put the 75 GXP on the motherboard IDE 0. Finally, fdisk would see so I partitioned and formatted it. Works great in Windows 98, but Windows 2000 doesn't see it, sort of. It shows up in Device Manager and is "working properly" but the Windows Explorer doesn't see it... ie. I can't access it. Now what?

P.S. Searching for new hardware does nothing because it is "already" there, but I still can't access it.

Pain in the @#$@#%@# @zz.

 

[Sunner]

Have a look in the disk administrator and see if it shows up there, and if so, does it have a letter assigned?

 

[Eug]

Yes, it's there, but it says it's "Unreadable". There is nothing wrong with the drive, however, since it works fine in Windows 98... read & write. I play MP3 directly off of it.

The PCI bus is currently 36.7 MHz, but it's the same speed in Windoze 98. I will decrease it to normal, but I'm sure that is completely irrelevant.

I do notice it gets VERY warm when running, but it's the same warmth, yes, in Windows 98, and I've now put directly in front of two case fans.


P.S. I have it on an ATA33 cable at the moment, but that should not be relevant. (My extra ATA66 is too short.) Actually it seems a bit of a waste to have my fastest drive (and one of the fastest IDE drives out there) on an ATA33 cable, and used simply for MP3 and photo storage. My OS is on a 34GXP.

 

[Eli]

I'm having an annoying problem with the IBM 75GXP 45gb I picked up yesterday, too.

I stuck it on the Promise/66 controller, it detected it, all was well. I went to partition it. Made the first partition. 1.5gb FAT32, for Win9x. Made the 2nd partition. 2gb NTFS, for Win2k. Made the 3rd partition. Remaining drive(~40gb) FAT32 for programs. It partitioned it, but whenever I try and format it, It says "Volume size is too big.", and it's not formatted.


WTF is going on here? Heh..

Anyway, back to your problem. Hmm. Well obviously it can't read it for one reason or another. Try and re-partition and format with Disk Management.

 

[Floyd]

Have you verified the jumpers? I hate to ask something so fundamental which you've probably checked ten times over, but there's a possible kink depending on how the drive is designed. I don't have an IBM drive, but some drives such as Western Digital use one setting for master and another if it is the only drive on the cable. I once moved a drive from a master config to a cable by itself and neglected to change the jumper, and the Promise U66 wouldn't recognize it although the operating system could still access it...the opposite of what you're experiencing, but suffice it to say that it can lead to some interesting behavior.

Another possibility, is the 75GXP an ATA/66 or ATA/100 device? If it is ATA/100, you may need to grab a utility from IBM to force it to use ATA/66 transfer mode which is compatible with the Promise controller.

Best regards,
Floyd

 

[Fardringle]

If you formatted the drive under Win98, then it's probably formatted as FAT32, which would explain why Win2K can't see it, since "NT" operating systems can't read FAT32, only FAT16..

 

[Floyd]

Haven't worked with Win2k before, eh? It can most certainly read FAT32, and can be installed on either FAT32 or NTFS5.

Best regards,
Floyd

 

[Floyd]

> "I have it on an ATA33 cable at the moment, but that should not be relevant. (My extra ATA66 is too short.)"

Actually, it can be relevant. Again, I am not sure if IBM drives work the same way as Maxtor or Western Digital, but if it is internally set up for ATA/66 operation and is on an ATA/33 controller or 40-wire cable, you can run into problems. I've seen instances ranging from only being able to transfer in PIO-4 to not being recognized at all.

Best regards,
Floyd

 

[Quickfingerz]

Has it been formatted? Some versions of windows won't show a non-partitioned non-formatted hard drive.

 

[Eug]

Argh, busy today, so I haven't been able to waste time posting during work.

Eli, you may need newer mobo BIOS, since older BIOS do not see drives over 32 MB. You can jumper the thing to a 32 MB drive and that may work, but that seems like a waste since you're paying essentially 40% more than you should for a 32 MB drive.

As for the ATA33 issue, at boot up I get a warning saying that it should work fine, but I'm not getting full speed.

Yes FAT32 works, since I set up everything on my computer as FAT32 and it reads fine in Win 2000. (I want access to my Win 2000 drives while using Win 98 so I don't us NTFS.)

It was not partitioned when I got it, and nothing would recognize it except the BIOS and the Promise at boot up. DOS, Windows 98, and Windows 2000 all said it was non-existent, and it didn't matter if it was on the mobo IDE (ATA33) or on the Promise (ATA66). I tried ALL possible jumper settings to no avail, including settings to limit the size to 32 GBas well as the settings that make the drive a 15 head instead of a 16. By the way, for the normal setting, there is only one Master jumper setting.

However, once I ripped out the Promise card, and unplugged ALL the other drives, and I stuck this on the IDE0 on the mobo, DOS saw it fine. I partitioned it and formatted it as FAT32 under DOS.

Then I replaced everything and stuck the IBM on the Promise as a secondary Master.

Booted up Win98. Everything was perfect and I was happy. When I booted up Windows 2000 it briefly saw it as "local disk" then it disappeared. I haven't seen it since. Actually Windows device manager says its there and it's fine, but Windows Explorer and Norton Utilities do not see it. The Drive manager or whatever it's called in the Administrative tools DOES see it but says it's a dead drive or corrupted or something like that and there's no way to format it. That's very odd, since it works perfectly in Win 98 even overclocked.

Tonite I will refdisk (word?) the drive, and try to see if it can be formatted in Win 2000 (assuming if it even sees it).

P.S. My Mac-head friend is making fun of me because it took him 8 mins to install and format the 40 GB drive in his Cube.

P.P.S. This 75GXP is the hottest running drive I've ever owned. Fine in front of the fan though.

 

[1KrazyFool]

Eli:

If you used Windows2000 to parition the drive, it will NOT work with paritions bigger than 32GB. This is a planned feature of Win2000. You must repartion it with a 32GB parition, then the remaining as the last drive. If you EVER want to make a parition greater than 32GB on that drive, you must write zeros to the first few sector to wipe the parition table. Using DOS fdisk will still result in not being able to get a drive greater than 32GB until you write a few zeros. Win2000 makes its mark and it sticks until you do that. After writing some zeros (you need not do the whole disk), use DOS fdisk to setup all your paritions and just have Win2000 convert a FAT32 into NTFS. Windows2000 will read a FAT32 drive greater than 32GB, you just can't parition and format one. I'm actually surprised Win2000 will even let you partition it. You would think if you can't format it, you wouldn't be able to partition it!

 

[DaddyG]

Heres a thought, try a different ATA66 cable. Do you have the blue end to the Promise and the black end to the master ??. Additionally, try the drive using the cable select setting, seems to help WIN2K. Old style cable select used a twisted type cable, but with ATA66, cable select uses the position on the cable, black master, grey slave.

 

[Eug]

For the ATA66 cable, I tried it backwards and forwards. (Blue on one end and black on the master.) Same thing. Now using an ATA33 cable. Same problem. Cable select didn't help.

So how do I write the zeros to the drive (FAT32) and where do I write them? My 45 GB partition is fine in Windoze 98 but can't be seen in 2000. And if I take this drive out and put it on another Win 2000 computer, or if I reformat it or defragment it or something, is it going to cough at the 45 partition again?

That "feature" seems kinda strange to me. 32 GB really isn't that big. And going to smaller partitions isn't really gonna save much space when all your files are MP3s or video. (And yes, I encode all my own MP3 - probably got about 15+ GB now. ) For this sort of thing if I had a 90 GB drive I'd much rather have two 45 GB partitions than three 30 GB partitions. Or perhaps having two 45 GB drives mirrored would be good too.

By the way, I did try limiting the drive to 32 GB and it didn't work, but I didn't actually format the drive at that size.

 

[1KrazyFool]

The "feature" is to get people to use NTFS instead, as NTFS rocks FAT32 (or so I hear). 2000 is designed to work better with NTFS than FAT32. You can partition and format larger than 32GB with NTFS, but this is unacceptable with Win98, linux, etc.

 

[SUOrangeman]

Eli, MS hardcoded Win2K to not *make* FAT32 volumes over 32GB. You have to use Ranish (this is what I did) or PartitionMagic to create/format the volume and then it will work fine in Win2K.

-SUO

 

[Eug]

Floyd was right.

It turns out I needed to set it to ATA 33 (UDMA 2). It came as ATA 100 (UDMA 5). That's irritating of IBM to send it out that way, because I couldn't even format it initially. I had to rip out everything just to get the computer to see it to deactivate the ATA 100. @#%@#%@!!! :|

(I haven't set it to ATA 66 it's on an ATA 33 cable anyway, and it's waaay past my bedtime. )

So now it's working great and I've all 45 Gigs. Thanks and good night!

 

[Floyd]

> "It came as ATA 100 (UDMA 5). That's irritating of IBM to send it out that way..."

Yes, it seems all manufacturers are doing it that way, despite the fact that ATA/100 controllers are not yet commonplace. No doubt it has caused many people the same trouble...too bad you had to do so much unnecessary hardware swapping, partitioning, and formatting before you figured it out.

> "Floyd was right!"

It is a burden I must bear every day of my life.

Glad I could help.

Best regards,
Floyd

 

[DaddyG]

I don't think that the 32gig setting has anything to do with WIN2K. Int13 Bios Extensions added the extra 4 bits to the cylinder, head, and sector addressing scheme. But these newer drives use more cylinders and less heads. Some BIOS's have issues with the large cylinder numbers and have to use what some drive makers refer to a 'Limited Cylinder Mode'.

 

[Eug]

<< I don't think that the 32gig setting has anything to do with WIN2K. Int13 Bios Extensions added the extra 4 bits to the cylinder, head, and sector addressing scheme. But these newer drives use more cylinders and less heads. Some BIOS's have issues with the large cylinder numbers and have to use what some drive makers refer to a 'Limited Cylinder Mode'. >>

OK you're over my head, but there are two extra sets of jumper settings. One sets the logical heads to 15 instead of 16, and other limits the size of the drive to 33.8 MB with 16 logical heads (whatever that means). Yes, it's because of the issues with old BIOS. However, won't it also help with Win 2000 for FAT 32 drives if you don't want to screw up your drive assignments when replacing a smaller drive?

By the way, I tried the drive set as UDMA 4 (ATA 66) and ran it on an ATA 33 cable. Windows 98 was fine, but again, Windows 2000 refused to access it. And if I left it unformatted but partitioned, Win 2000 would hard crash. Windows 2000 is VERY picky it seems. If things are running smoothly it's extremely stable, but if anything goes wrong it phreaks out. Windows 98 simply ignored the drive when it couldn't access it.

Also, I gave Partition Magic 5 a shot on this empty drive. I have now sworn off Partition Magic. So many people I have known have had problems with it, and when I installed it I have to say I was unimpressed. First, even the floppy drive installation process doesn't even have a fail safe. It says it erases and rewrites floppies for the install but if there wasn't enough space on my floppy disk the installation just dies. Had to manually format all my discs and then start over. (Partition Magic doesn't natively support Win 2000 so it has to be run off floppies.) Second, even formatting my drive was very problematic. Very slow and finally died halfway through the process. So finally I just went went back to the clunky fdisk. Tried and true. As for the real purpose of Partition Magic. I dunno, sounds risky. (But backups I'd do of course.)

 

[Floyd]

> &quot;Windows 2000 is VERY picky it seems. If things are running smoothly it's extremely stable, but if anything goes wrong it phreaks out.&quot;

Haha, I've said this over and over. Can we get an amen?

I find it interesting that you've had so many problems with PartitionMagic...I've been using it for years and have only experienced a single issue which involved v5 and NTFS partitions. I didn't know it at the time, but that version did not natively support Win2k's NTFS 5. Good thing I had run a backup first. I should point out, however, that I only run PartitionMagic from DOS because there is less of an opportunity for OS issues to introduce themselves.

With regard to PM crapping out half of the way through a format, did it give you an error message or did it freeze up? PM often has a tendency to appear frozen when in fact it is not...the progress meter will stay at a particular point for an extended period of time and then all of the sudden it will jump to 100%. It also seems to equate the length of a process by the number of steps. So if I define a partition and format it (2 steps), it instantly says it is half way through and then takes an hour to finish the last &quot;half&quot;.

In fact, I just prepared a 40GB drive with it yesterday. The progress meter instantly jumped to 49%, slowly crept along to 54%, hung there for ~30minutes, and then jumped to 100%. The UI is quirky, but I dare say very stable.

Best regards,
Floyd

 

[Eug]

OK, you may be right. It got stuck at 47% for something like 20 mins, but there was no error message. I couldn't escape out of it either so I assumed it had hanged. Maybe it hadn't. (Using DOS.)

But this was on an empty drive - no data to transfer. Perhaps it's all the overhead for checking the disc integrity. Fdisk and Win98 format (or just DOS format.com) with scandisk seems much faster. In fact if you don't use scandisk the whole process takes less than 10 minutes, which includes fdisk's disk verification (before formatting).