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MB Won't recognize 320GB drive??

JeepinEd

JeepinEd

Senior member
OK, this one has me stumped.
I'm fixing a friend's computer who's drive went bad.
It's a Compaq Presario S4210NX. w/ DVD drive
It originally came with an 80GB drive & Windows XP
The main board appears to be a P4G533-LA w/ 256MB ram.

I purchased a new 320GB WD EIDE drive and tried to do a fresh install of XP SP1a.
The BIOS correctly identifies the drive and the XP install disk will go as far as formatting it and installing the initial files. When XP has completed installing the initial files, it does a re-boot, after which I get a Primary Master Drive Fails error.

I have tried disconnecting everything but the drive, changing ribbon cables, changing the jumper from Cable Select to Primary Master/no slave, even reset the BIOS, but nothing.

I thought I had a bad drive, so I exchanged it, but the exact same thing happened.
Just for the heck of it, I plugged in an old 120GB drive and had no problem completing a fresh installation.

I also updated the BIOS to the latest one that I found, which is still pretty old, but no luck.

Any suggestions (other than tossing the POS)??

Thanks,

Ed
 
Edit: I see you've tried most of these things already. Running out of ideas. Maybe the disk controller has failed?

Are you using 80-conductor IDE cables? Are you using the Cable Select setting on the disk jumpers? If not, do both.

WD used to have unusual jumper settings on its IDE drives. A "single" drive required a different jumper setting than a Master or a Slave when using two drives on the same IDE channel.
 
Last edited:
You don't mention the system specs but a lot of older EIDE systems have a hardware limitation that prevents them from recognizing drives over about 132GB (IIRC).

Your 120GB is about the largest the controller can see.

It seems like there might be a workaround for this, but it has been so long I have forgot.
 
JeepinEd said:
OK, this one has me stumped.
I'm fixing a friend's computer who's drive went bad.
It's a Compaq Presario S4210NX. w/ DVD drive
It originally came with an 80GB drive & Windows XP
The main board appears to be a P4G533-LA w/ 256MB ram.

I purchased a new 320GB WD EIDE drive and tried to do a fresh install of XP SP1a.
The BIOS correctly identifies the drive and the XP install disk will go as far as formatting it and installing the initial files. When XP has completed installing the initial files, it does a re-boot, after which I get a Primary Master Drive Fails error.

I have tried disconnecting everything but the drive, changing ribbon cables, changing the jumper from Cable Select to Primary Master/no slave, even reset the BIOS, but nothing.

I thought I had a bad drive, so I exchanged it, but the exact same thing happened.
Just for the heck of it, I plugged in an old 120GB drive and had no problem completing a fresh installation.

I also updated the BIOS to the latest one that I found, which is still pretty old, but no luck.

Any suggestions (other than tossing the POS)??

Thanks,

Ed
Click to expand...

I had this problem also I was installing xp home and had a problem seein my 400 gb hd
I reinstalled with xp sp2 it saw the 400 gb (37x gb blah blah) with out a problem..


what xp sp are you using?
 
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It is possible that the mobo cannot handle a drive over 180 GB. My present (old) XP (thru SP3) machine is that way. It will boot and ruin on 160s but not on 250s.

Try running FDISK and partitioning the drive to less than 200GB and see if that will work. The larger size may cause the format and installation to place the MBR out of range of the mobo's controller. You might also consider a new contgroller card and disable the on board one.
 
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Link to specs on your computer

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c00025775&tmp_task=prodinfoCategory&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us〈=en&product=330353

Product name s4210nx
U.S. product number DK332A
Chassis (color) Mid-size tower- Pinehurst 2- Black/gray
Color detail Black/gray
Microprocessor Pentium 4 2.4 GHz
Frontside Bus speed 400 MHz
Processor architecture mPGA478
Chipset 845GL
Hard drive 80 GB
Drive RPM 5400 RPM
Memory 256 MB DDR SDRAM
Memory max 1 GB
Memory speed 2100 MB/sec
Total DIMM sockets 2-184 pin
Available DIMM sockets 1-184 pin open
Multimedia drive 16x DVD-ROM drive
CD, DVD Rewritable drive CD-RW (48x/12x/48x)
Diskette drive 3.5 inches (1.44 MB)
Fax and data modem Lucent V.92 56K modem
Network Realtek RTL8100
Keyboard Compaq PS/2 Internet Keyboard
Mouse Internet Scroll Mouse – PS/2
Sound Realtek ALC202A
Speakers N/A
Speaker form factor N/A
Total expansion slots Three PCI
Available slots Two PCI
Total drive bays Ext (two) 3.5 inches (two) 5.25 inches Int (one) 3.5 inches
Available drive bays 3.5 inches ext., 5.25 inches ext
Total external ports Serial, six USB 2.0, parallel, two PS/2
Available external ports Serial, six USB 2.0, parallel
Front mounted ports Two USB 2.0
Video graphics (AGP) 845GL
Graphics memory UMA up to 64 MB
Tower dimensions 16.55 x 6.88 x 14.5 inches (23.8 pounds)
Power supply 200 Watts
 
Thanks for all the tips so far.

I created an 80GB partition to use as the C: drive, but no luck.
I don't have an SP2 install disk to try out, so no luck there. (Using SP1a for the install).

At this point I'm thinking of just giving her the 120GB drive, but the fact that I wasn't able to get that 320GB drive working really bugs me. I've worked on many PC's and Macs and had never run into this problem before. I've seen operating systems with this problem, but not a computer's BIOS.

Now it's more of a challenge/learning experience than anything else.

Ed
 
Run Belarc Advisor and see what storage controller you have in there.
I think your computer shipped with this one:

Intel(r) 82801DB Ultra ATA Storage Controller-24CB

Which should be ok with the larger hard drives. You may want to check the
HP site for updated Motherboard chipset drivers.
 
If you have a spare PCI slot, you could consider installing a PCI IDE disk controller. I've installed PCI disk controllers (both IDE and SATA) on several PCs of that generation. Many of the Windows Home Servers I've built for friends, using 1 TB hard disks as the boot disk, use PCI add-in disk controllers (although those are SATA or IDE/SATA controllers).
 
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JeepinEd said:
Thanks for all the tips so far.
I've worked on many PC's and Macs and had never run into this problem before. I've seen operating systems with this problem, but not a computer's BIOS.
Ed
Click to expand...

Easy there.

Your youth is showing!

This used to be a common problem when HDs were bigger than the BIOS could read.

Remember the dynamic drive overlay programs ( EZ Drive etc... ) used to interpret drive geometries to the BIOS.

http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/resolving_drive_barriers.htm
 
pcgeek11 said:
This used to be a common problem when HDs were bigger than the BIOS could read.
Click to expand...
It's certainly sounding like the BIOS is the problem. I'm a bit surprised it'd be a problem with something that "recent", but once you get over the 137 GB limit, I suppose anything could happen.
 
In the old days sometimes they used low level techniques to read a drive larger than the BIOS limit. They would write the software to the beginning of the drive. It would split up the drive and make it to appear as if it was two smaller harddrives.

The drive may be fine on another motherboard. Or there may be an option to enable large drive support.
 
pcgeek11 said:
Easy there.

Your youth is showing!

This used to be a common problem when HDs were bigger than the BIOS could read.

Remember the dynamic drive overlay programs ( EZ Drive etc... ) used to interpret drive geometries to the BIOS.

http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/resolving_drive_barriers.htm
Click to expand...

Oh man, I totally forgot about dynamic drive overlays.
I think it's more of my old age showing. My memory just isn't the same.
I still remember trying to get those huge 20MB RLL drives to work.
 
RebateMonger said:
It's certainly sounding like the BIOS is the problem. I'm a bit surprised it'd be a problem with something that "recent", but once you get over the 137 GB limit, I suppose anything could happen.
Click to expand...

I've been thinking about this.
$20 is pretty cheap. I might give it a shot.
 
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