Replacing Hard Drive Problem

BRANMU

Junior Member
Jan 18, 2005
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0
0
I have an old NEC 75mhz Pentium, the hard drive broke and I was attempting to install a new 10gb HD, but I have been having some trouble. I have no problem getting the BIOS to recognize the drive, then it boots to DOS and I use fdisk to clear the partions. If I sucessfully partion the drive, the computer restarts and attempts to boot DOS. The screen says: starting ms-dos, but it freezes on that screen. I can only get into DOS again by changing the device type in the BIOS, then I can remove the partiton and do it all over agin. But even if I try again I get the same frozen starting MS-DOS screen. Since I can't get into DOS I can't format the drive or install the operating system. Any ideas?


-Thanks
 

spanky

Lifer
Jun 19, 2001
25,716
4
81
first off... i am wondering if the bios recognized the hd correctly. does the POST show it's a 10gb drive? if not, then try to see if u can get an updated bios and flash it. as for the repartitioning and format, you could either download the utility from the hard drive manufacturer, or pop that hard drive in another machine.
 

vwtankgirl

Member
Jan 13, 2005
62
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0
A lot of the older computers have a hard time recognizing bigger hard drives. (10gig doesn't seem so big anymore) I had a P100 that wouldn't take my 6.8 gig no matter what I did. I never tried flashing the BIOS though, but some of the older systems don't have flashable BIOS. Check your MB to make sure before you try. Otherwise look for a smaller drive in the 1-4gig range.
 

spanky

Lifer
Jun 19, 2001
25,716
4
81
also, with fdisk, did u make sure to clear all DOS and non-DOS partitions? i mean... if u successfully cleared all partitions, i would not think u'd be able to boot to that drive. i would find out which manufacturer made that hd, then go to their website and download their drive utility. it should make a bootable floppy for u, and u can wipe out the drive that way.
 

BRANMU

Junior Member
Jan 18, 2005
2
0
0
The autodect in the bios reads the drive as 8455 mb and gets all of the other specs right. It's a Seagte I'll give your idea a crack.

Thanks