just put a new system together, having problems

[911paramedic]

I just got an ASUS A7N8X Deluxe, 512 of crucial ddr, and parts from my old system. I cant seem to get the HD (brand new 80GB that I was using as a slave in my old system). I booted up, went to bios, everything looked good. Tried to fdisk the HD and I get "Error reading fixed disk". I put in an older 98 master HD (after disconnecting the 80GB drive) and it booted up. I did change the jumper to bypass the serial raid function too, so that may have helped to recognize the 98 drive.

After that worked I figured it was the jumper settings that were causing the problems, but as soon as I switched the drives back it went MIA again. I got the same error message. I tried different cables, different power cables, etc. Nothing seems to work.

Any help would be great. I did format this drive through XP drive management, and that may be why it is not recognized, I don't know. It has no active partitions, just formatted in full as one drive. I cant see how that is the problem though...

Oh, and it does show up right in the bios, right size and everything.

Thanks for any help you can give me...

 

[Lord Evermore]

What version of fdisk are you using? The older version in Win98 and earlier won't recognize larger drives than 64GB properly (MS says it will report whatever the extra size is, in your case 14GB in binary, but it may be the cause of your problem now; they did release a fix for it, but there's no guarantee you have the newer version). FDISK also can't remove NTFS partitions, so if you used NTFS on it before, you're going to need to do something else to format it (such as wipe the drive with the manufacturer utilities).

If you're installing WindowsXP anyway, why not just use XP setup to delete the partition and create a new one?

 

[momo]

Originally posted by: 911paramedic
I just got an ASUS A7N8X Deluxe, 512 of crucial ddr, and parts from my old system. I cant seem to get the HD (brand new 80GB that I was using as a slave in my old system). I booted up, went to bios, everything looked good. Tried to fdisk the HD and I get "Error reading fixed disk". I put in an older 98 master HD (after disconnecting the 80GB drive) and it booted up. I did change the jumper to bypass the serial raid function too, so that may have helped to recognize the 98 drive.

After that worked I figured it was the jumper settings that were causing the problems, but as soon as I switched the drives back it went MIA again. I got the same error message. I tried different cables, different power cables, etc. Nothing seems to work.

Any help would be great. I did format this drive through XP drive management, and that may be why it is not recognized, I don't know. It has no active partitions, just formatted in full as one drive. I cant see how that is the problem though...

Oh, and it does show up right in the bios, right size and everything.

Thanks for any help you can give me...

How are your jumpers set now, I don't use windows, but I think I recall hearing that you may need to set the jumpers to cable select

 

[mechBgon]

If it's a recent WD drive, look at the label's setting for "Single drive" if that's how you'll be using it. On the ones I've used recently, this means removing the jumper completely.

 

[911paramedic]

Originally posted by: Lord Evermore
What version of fdisk are you using? The older version in Win98 and earlier won't recognize larger drives than 64GB properly (MS says it will report whatever the extra size is, in your case 14GB in binary, but it may be the cause of your problem now; they did release a fix for it, but there's no guarantee you have the newer version). FDISK also can't remove NTFS partitions, so if you used NTFS on it before, you're going to need to do something else to format it (such as wipe the drive with the manufacturer utilities).

If you're installing WindowsXP anyway, why not just use XP setup to delete the partition and create a new one?

I tried to boot with the xp cd but it seemed to hang. I will have to put my old vid card back in my old box, create a new boot disk with the newer fdisk I guess. Never had a problem like this before, what a pain. I do think I had it as an NTFS too...

 

[Richard98]

I had a similar problem with a WD-120. It was working under W2k and somehow it got corrupted. I could see the drive under W2k, but I believe it showed up as a "Virtual Drive". Couldn't partition it, format it or write to it.

Called WD customer support and they suggested downloading their Data Lifeguard tools Text, check the drive for errors and write zeros to the entire drive if there were no errors. This process worked for me. After writing zeroes, W2k recognized the drive as a NEW drive and I was able to partition and format it.

I also changed the jumper setting on mine to "cable select".

 

[HumbleFish]

I had a similar problem after running linux and Win98 on the same primary drive... The only way I could get the HD cleaned up was to use Killdisk, it worked great (very simple, takes awhile though).

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: Richard98
I had a similar problem with a WD-120. It was working under W2k and somehow it got corrupted. I could see the drive under W2k, but I believe it showed up as a "Virtual Drive". Couldn't partition it, format it or write to it.

Called WD customer support and they suggested downloading their Data Lifeguard tools Text, check the drive for errors and write zeros to the entire drive if there were no errors. This process worked for me. After writing zeroes, W2k recognized the drive as a NEW drive and I was able to partition and format it.

I also changed the jumper setting on mine to "cable select".

Yep, I agree, writing zeros is the way to go on this one, and if it's the lone master leave it jumped to cable select the way it shipped.

 

[911paramedic]

After pulling out all my hair for a few hours, I figured it out. When I set the jumper I looked at the bottom of the drive and it showed master as being in the center. This morning I was screwing around checking everything and noticed different settings on the top of the drive! It had CS, Slave, Master, Master ALONE. I crapped in my pants when I saw that, LMAO.

So for it to work alone, I had to remove the jumper all together. My boot disk was bad too, so I had to make a new one of those too, now its up and running.

Thanks for all the suggestions, and I got a couple good links from you all too.