I need help! I have a branded PC - IBM PC 300PL can I use a 20gig HDD?

[Battousai01]

Hi guys! Im in need of help.. I have here 3 branded PC's (IBM PC 300PL and two IBM PC 300GL) I already tried installing the 20gig hdd, first I tried to install it as a slave drive on a 1.2gig hdd as the primary master that has a Windows 98 S.E. operating system. It worked fine Win98 detected the disk as 20gig (partitioned as two drives 10gig both) I can access my 20gig hdd with no trouble...

My problem is this.. when I tried to install my dual partitioned hdd 10gig each (20gig) hdd as primary master only and boot the startup disk and install Win98 scandisk shows a message telling me that the remaining final cluster on the drive cannot be read etc.. and whenevr I go to DOS I cant access the other partitioned drive (drive D: the other 10gig half) I can only access drive C: (10gig)

I dont know but correct me if Im wrong is it because the branded IBM PC 300PL's bios or motherboard really doesnt support 20 gig hdd? (I know it really doesnt) or is there a possible way to correct this? like find a tweaked bios on the net? but where? I already updated the bios but I cant find tweaked bios of branded PC's

btw here the specs of the IBM PC 300PL:
-Pentium 233Mhz.
-32 MB EDO RAM
-1.2 gig HDD
-10-24X CD-ROM
etc.

any help will be highly appreciated

thnx!

 

[wondersteve]

my company has ALOT of these pc's (like 100's). what is the type of the pc's? it will be a 4 digit # beinging with 6 (ex. 6265, 6583, etc). also need the model #, which is a 3 digits and usually ends w/ a letter.

let me know and i will see what i can find out

 

[DogberryOfMessina]

Is the drive formatted with FAT16 or FAT32? This is off the cuff, but I know that there is a limit to the amount of drive space that FAT16 can address. Don't reformat you're drive until someone smarter than me in this forum makes sure I know what I'm talking about, but upgrading the file system to FAT32 will eliminate the addressing limitations of FAT16, assuming of course that this is the problem.

Bottom line: I think you need to go to FAT32...but you didn't hear anything from me

 

[redbeard1]

Is the bios set to auto-detect the drives? I think that is a setting in an IBM bios. If it sees it as a second drive ok, it should see it as a primary drive. You may have to prep the drive, fdisk and the like, when it is on the primary channel so that the system sets it up properly. I've seen drives have issues when moving between systems because of bios differences, but not usually from secondary to primary, but anything is possible. Can that system boot from the cd-rom?

 

[wondersteve]

Originally posted by: DogberryOfMessina
Is the drive formatted with FAT16 or FAT32? This is off the cuff, but I know that there is a limit to the amount of drive space that FAT16 can address. Don't reformat you're drive until someone smarter than me in this forum makes sure I know what I'm talking about, but upgrading the file system to FAT32 will eliminate the addressing limitations of FAT16, assuming of course that this is the problem.

Bottom line: I think you need to go to FAT32...but you didn't hear anything from me

you are right ... if he is running fat16,... the max size it can see is 2.1 gb i think (trying to call on that mcse cert. knowledge). i am pretty sure if you make a windows 98 boot disk and and format the drives w/ it ... they will be fat32 ... there being able to see the max size of teh 10 gig drive

hope we are helping

another note: enable your profile so we can send you private messages ..... the help

 

[Battousai01]

Hi! guys! I finally did the trick!!! I was able to use a 20gig HDD on a machine (IBM PC300PL and 300GL) that doesnt support large disk without having to install a Promise ATA card or installing a tweaked bios!!!

but before I tell you what I did here's the story of the HDD...


actually the disk (20gig which is partitioned to two 10gig each) I tried to install is from a PIII 550Mhz. CPU and it is a FAT32 drive... I tried to install it on an IBM PC 300PL and 300GL which both arent have the capability to handle disk larger that 8.4gig and 10gig respectively. The IBM bios doesnt show any LBA settings or any HDD settings so I cant adjust the bios setting of the drive so I think the old IBM CPU's bioses really doesnt support big drives (you cant do anything about it) so I still tried to install it and format the first 10gig partitioned of the 20gig drive and tried to redetect the drive by the CPU but still the other half cant be detected.

so what I did was...

I was surprised when I installed a 1.2gig HDD with Win98 on it on the old IBM CPU's and installed the 20gig drive as a slave drive, Win98 succesfully detected it as two partitioned drive (10gig each) and I have no problem accessing it. But when I am not in Win98 environment the other half of the drive cant be detected (for example I boot from a startup or bootable disk) I cant access the other half of the 20gig (the other partitioned half) so I assumed that whenever I am in Win98 environment I can fully access the entire 20gig drive.

Can anyone explain why a machine that doesnt support large capacity HDD with a Windows 98 O.S. installed can still detect it if you are inside Windows 98 O.S.???




Now this what happened a while ago when I was experimenting on a trick I thought of...

I told you guys that the 1.2gig primary HDD with a Win98 O.S. can detect the entire 20gig HDD (partitioned into two) inside Windows right? And I cant use the 20gig as a primary master drive cause the other partitioned drive of the 20gig HDD cant be detected by scandisk so what I did was I copied all the contents of the 1.2gig drive to the first partitioned drive of the 20gig and installed it as a primary master!

when I restarted the machine, the CPU booted using the 20gig drive (partitioned into two)

but whenever Im out of Windows I cant access the other 10gig of the partitioned drive (in DOS without Windows)...

so whats the implication of this? if your using a 20gig HDD but the machine doesnt support it but still you can access and fully use it using Windows????


hope you guys can understand my story... I kinda excited when writing this...