How do you get an older computer to recognize a newer, bigger hard drive?

[masterc]

I am in the process of upgrading my bro's very old pentium 200 computer. I am trying to install the two hard drives in an old P2- 333 system (Still pretty old but can't beat the price... free!)
The problem is the P2 mobo bios (lx chipset) won't recognize the newer drive. It's a WD 60gig 7200 rpm drive. He was able to use this in the pentium machine, so it should work in the P2. He told me he had to install some disk to get it to work in the pentium machine. I am assuming it's some type of disk manager software.

We can't find the install disk it came with. Can I use any disk manager software?
Also, when you run the disk man. software does it reformat the drive? (I hope not , because he's got a ton of stuff on that drive)

Or is there something else I am missing in the bios set-up?

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

 

[ojai00]

I think flashing the BIOS might solve the problem. Since your drive is a Western Digital HD, you can get the disc managing software from their website. I would suspect that the software would erase everthing on the drive because it has to format it.

 

[drunkenkaos]

What O/S are u using? Most older systems won't recognize drives larger than 8.4 gigs. To get around that, when you partition and fomat your new HD, create multiple partitions of 8.4 or smaller until all the space is used up. I'm assuming you are using Windows 95 (FAT16). Windows 98 and 98SE will allow the same stepup and they sould recognize drives larger than 8.4 gig in a FAT32 setup. When you partition and format a HD, all previous data is lost (unless you're some kind of data recovery guru). To update your bios, go to the computer or mobo manufacturer's website and get the latest and greatest bios for that particular model. They should have instructions on how to create a bootable floppy to upgrade your bios. But this will not guarantee that your hard drives will be recognized by the computer. That is also a function of the O/S. Also do a search for bios update information to answer your questions. All the major HD manufacturers have websites with their disk formating and partitioning S/W available for D/L.

 

[bacillus]

suggest you get a cheap ata100 pci card & attach the hdds to it.
the card has its own bios & will run those hdds at their max performance!