NEW ECS K7S5A and Maxtor Hard Drive problem

[Archman]

Okay here is the situation:

New System Specs:

ECS K7S5A motherboard (with onboard nic)
60 GB Maxtor Hard Drive
128 MB DDR
32 MB Aopen Geoforce 200MX Video card
Floppy Disk Drive
300 Watt ATX power supply
Liteon CDRW Drive

After using the manufacturer's partition utility, as well as win98 boot
disk, as well as win2000 boot disks I still have had no luck getting the
drive to be recognised. It keeps stating that the drive is not
partitioned.

I went in to the store that I purchased the hard drive from(60 GB
Maxtor). They ran a format of the hard drive on their system, and
formatted the drive without a problem. I told them about the problems. I
was told that the memory could be bad, or that the power supply is not
enough, or that the cpu is bad, or that the motherboard could be
shorting out. I used my main system and swapped each part and tested one
by one and found no problem.

The Hard Drive is recognized in the BIOS and I have made sure that all
of the cables are connected properly, and that nothing is loose or half
connected anywhere on the motherboard(the jumpers are set properly as
well). When I used the win98 boot disk, I choose to load without cd-rom
driver, and it begins to load to ramdrive, but then I get an error
message stating that "Windows has noticed that the C drive is not
partitioned..." and it gives me choices to use fdisk, check for a virus,
etc. I key in fdisk and get and fdisk i/o error message, and nothing
happens except I get "A:" prompt again.

When I use the win2000 boot disks it runs , except for the last boot
disk, I get an error message with an i/o error, again a no go

Here is the funny thing, I decided to take the hard drive out, and
install my main hard drive from my system, as well as a spare drive to
see what would happen. I first put in my spare 5 GB hard drive, and
popped in the win98 boot disk, and it loaded up without a hitch! I could
run fdisk, it asked me for allowing fat32 and I said yes, so it got me
to the partition table selection screen (with the 60 GB HD that would
never happen, kept getting an fdisk error).

I was astounded, so I took that 5 GB out, and put in my 20 GB hard
drive, and that worked to!!! I took the 60 GB hard drive and hooked it
up to my main computer, and I could read and write to it...

Now it seems as though the 60 GB hard drive will not work with the new
(ECS K7S5A) motherboard at all. I could fdisk it when the new HD was in
my computer, but with the new system, it will not allow me to do
anything at all.

Has anyone ever heard of a motherboard being incompatible with a Hard
Drive???

I even tried to upgrade the BIOS following the instructions provided by
the manufacturer, and the new BIOS file, but it would not allow me to
upgrade the BIOS, it failed. I tried all the BIOS files for the new
motherboard, and two BIOS flash utilities, but it would not allow me to.

It simply seems that this motherboard does not like this Hard Drive?! I
read the user's manual and made sure that nothing simple was being
missed. BOTTOM LINE, compatability problem with the new motherboard and
hard drive somehow???

Any input on this is appreciated

Thanks,
Shane

 

[DaiShan]

couple of questions for ya, is the hard drive selected as master via the onboard jumpers? It will need to be, 2nd have you tried setting your cdrom as the first boot device in your bios, then saying start computer with cdrom support (I am assuming your cd is bootable if not you will need a boot disk) then run fdisk from the d:\ make sure you enable large disk support, and create a primary dos partition, then restart and this time start the windows 98 setup, see what that gets ya.


/edit also make sure that the hard drive is on the primary controller, and I would keep the cdrom on the secondary controller.

 

[Archman]

Thanks for the info.

I've got it set up properly as master and everything is plugged in where it should be.

Here is the situation: when i use the boot disk and it prompts me for large disk support i hit "y", and then I get an fdisk error message

Everyone seems to be saying power supply, or memory, or human error, etc. I've checked everything out, and it appears that for some reason when this brand new motherboard is connected with this brand hard drive, it just will not fdisk!

When I try using a smaller hard drive (20 GB) it works without a hitch! When I put back the 60 GB hard Drive, fdisk still gives error messages. Put the 60 GB HD into another system and can fdisk it there without any problems. Got it formatted and partitioned properly in the other system, and when I pop it back into the new motherboard and use the boot disk it detects that the hard drive has not been partitioned! Go figure!

It is set up with bare essentials: Hard Drive, Duron 950 cpu, 32 MB video card, and floppy disk drive.

 

[DaiShan]

ok, you can rule out the RAM since the other hdd's worked, do you remember the error msg you were getting? The PSU may be at fault, not sure yet, also have you made absolutely sure that there are no bent pins on the hard drive, even a little bent?

 

[Archman]

this is the message "Error reading/writing fdisk"

Win2000 boot disk 1 - 3 work fine, get to number 4 and as it almost finishes get this "error I/O : 00000400".

Even "fdisk/mbr" will not work with this drive connected to this motherboard.

PS was tried from my main system, which is a 1 GHz plus a lot of components and that PS is AMD approved. Still can not fdisk that hard drive. Boot disk loads in to RAM Drive, and states that the Hard Drive is not formatted, which is a load of manure because it was formatted using fdisk on my main system.

I even switched cables from my main computer, checked jumper pins, and settings, checked all BIOS settings as per manual. Checked to make sure that the ide cables were properly connected...

I still can not figure out why this one drive will not work with the new system, everything else seems to work, even a different hard drive. Everything works, nothing is bad but it just seems as though this motherboard does not like the Maxtor 60 GB hard drive.