hard drive bad?? or motherboard?

[kruseman]

i have 2 hard drives. one ibm 40 gb, and one wd 60 gb hard drive. and neither works in a computer with epox 8kha and athlong 1000. It's not the cables, cause i hook up the cables to the cdroms and they work, but the hard drives don't. there is power to them, however, it does not recognize it. could it be somehow both hard drives are bad? or is it the motherboard? i'm thinking it's the hard drives, and if it is, how would i go about getting a rma for them both, they're both less than 3 years old.

I didn't know if this should be in the motherboard or the hard drive section. you can move it if you have to mods.

thanks
kruseman

[Kuasimodem]

Have you checked the jumper settings on the hard drives? I've had drives not recognized wehn they are set wrong.

[DLR37919]

I agree with kuasi check jumper settings and bios for boot settings

[kruseman]

you are exactly right on the western digital. however, does the rma take into account lost space. for instance, the wd is a 60gb hard drive, but it is only recognized in the 30 gb range or around there. I was just wondering if that would be an rma thing. Thanks again.

kruseman

[mickwish]

Have you checked how they are recognised in the BIOS? You say the jumpers are set correctly, but how are they set? Some HDD's don't coexixst easily with others, so try swapping master and slave, with correct rejumpering, or course. Then try each drive separately as master only, always checking in the BIOS to see if they are detected or not.

Hope this helps

Good luck

[KenKun]

Try to clear the CMOS (by jumper) and then load the default settings ...
That should automatically detect your HD ... and attach one drive at a time ...
As stated above, double check the jumper settings ..

Regards

[kruseman]

it is the only drive in there. I have had it in other computers too, but it always comes out to be only like 30 gb. i'll go boot up and check real quick. there is no jumpers on the drive, cause master has no jumpers.



thanks
kruseman

[DLR37919]

most likely its the motherboard bios won't id the drive over 30 but there are drivers for the hdd to id over 30 have it on disk but don't know how to get it to you picked it up off of kazaa months ago.or you could flash the bios to the most recent this might take care of it.
PHONEMAN

[Richard Cranium]

Some large drives have jumpers for limiting them to 32gb, this would put you just about at 30gb after formatting, check that.

Also, the "Master" setting on some HD's is for when you have a "Slave" on that IDE cable, try putting it on CS instead of removing the jumper.

[mickwish]

The 30 G only sound like a BIOS limitation. Check on epox's website for BIOS updates to let it see HDD's bigger than 30G (32G actually, but that's not the issue). A board that new should have an updated BIOS available for this

edit: beaten by Doc AGAIN!!

edit2: what you need is called a DDO and most drive vendors have them on setup disks for the drive you can download - like MaxBlast for Maxtor drives, etc. A new BIOs is better though

[kruseman]

ok, i'll try to find that epox bios flash. also, does this mean i need to reset my cmos, cause if i do, i will need help in finding where its at to reset it. it's an epox 8k7a. another thing, they are both at 37 gb, even though one is a 40 and the other a 60. in dos, at bootup it reads that they are 40 and 60, so i'm sure it is a bios thing. so i'll try the bios thing, but how do i do it? can anyone help?

thanks
kruseman

[Kuasimodem]

If the Western Digital is being used alone, remove all the jumpers from the drive. If the WD is being used with the other drive, set it as master and put it on the end of the IDE cable, jumper the IBM as slave and put it on the middle connector.

[Dax_Brandy]

how did this happen? is this a fresh install PC? you might consider first the most available alternative solutions before going into flashing the BIOS.

good luck.

[kruseman]

it never has shown that it was 60 gb, but i didn't really care since i didn't really need that much. but now, i'm trying to fix it. i flashed it with the newest already and it still shows 37.2 gb. any suggestions??? also, i have already jumpered it and done that exactly

kruseman

[mickwish]

Where does it show 37.2G, kruseman? In the BIOS?

[kruseman]

no, in windows it shows 37.2, but when i first boot up, in like the table thing that tells you your drive specs and stuff, it says a little over 60.

kruseman

[EndobioticChaos]

Originally posted by mickwish
The 30 G only sound like a BIOS limitation. Check on epox's website for BIOS updates to let it see HDD's bigger than 30G (32G actually, but that's not the issue). A board that new should have an updated BIOS available for this

edit: beaten by Doc AGAIN!!

edit2: what you need is called a DDO and most drive vendors have them on setup disks for the drive you can download - like MaxBlast for Maxtor drives, etc. A new BIOs is better though

Well, for starters, is this mobo an 8kha, or an 8kha+? Because if it's the + model it's definitely not a BIOS limitation.

I'd advise you to boot into DOS and run FDisk to see what that comes up with for the size of the HDD before you just go and flash your BIOS. Certainly can't hurt anything to try it.

Oh, just noticed this:

no, in windows it shows 37.2, but when i first boot up, in like the table thing that tells you your drive specs and stuff, it says a little over 60.

In light of that, DEFINITELY run fdisk on it. I'm guessing for some reason there's a second partition on it, probably non-DOS. Very similar to a problem I had once... If fdisk shows a second partition on it, delete that partition and create an extended DOS partition that uses up all the unused space. That should let you use all 60gigs of your HDD space, though 20+ gigs will be in another partition. Or if there's nothing you need on the HDD you could just delete all partitions and make one primary partition that uses all the space.

Maybe I'm all wet, but I don't think so if your BIOS recognizes it as having 60gigs of space.

[kruseman]

alright, now that i think about it, that sounds like it could certainly work, but i have to go back to school now, and i have quiz bowl til tonight, so i'll try it tonight and see what's going on and update you guys

thanks
kruseman

[kruseman]

it now shows up as 60 gb hard drive. thank you very much guys. i appreciate everything you did

thanks
kruseman