garmanma Posted April 10, 2007 Report Share Posted April 10, 2007 I have an old box I hate to throw out, so I decided to fix it up for linux. I pirated a formatted, but empty, working 40 gig Seagate drive out of my wife's unit. The mobo is an old Biostar with an Award BIOS. It supports large hard drives. I can't get the BIOS to recognize the drive. I'v set it to master, cable select, even slave with no luck. When I set the jumper to limit the drive to 32 gig position, The BIOS recognizes it as the IDE primary slave, not master. I've tried different ribbon cables, both 20 and 40 with no luck. I put the original 3 gig drive back in and it's recognized with no problem. It's a removable BIOS chip that was originally so corrupted I couldn't even flash it using the floppy drive. I had Biosman.com flash it for me. I'm just wondering if that could be the problem. I got to take a break from this thing for awhile. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd really appreciate hearing themThanks Mark Quote Link to post Share on other sites
TheTerrorist_75 Posted April 10, 2007 Report Share Posted April 10, 2007 Put the jumper on Cable Select and plug the hard drive in at the end of the IDE cable. Go into the Bios where the drives are listed and check that it is set to auto detect the drive (If the motherboard is capable). You might also neeed to use an 80-pin IDE cable. You may want to put in a fresh Cmos battery before doing all this. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
shanenin Posted April 10, 2007 Report Share Posted April 10, 2007 I would be curious to see if you have luck with another different large drive. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
garmanma Posted April 11, 2007 Author Report Share Posted April 11, 2007 Put the jumper on Cable Select and plug the hard drive in at the end of the IDE cable. Go into the Bios where the drives are listed and check that it is set to auto detect the drive (If the motherboard is capable). You might also neeed to use an 80-pin IDE cable. You may want to put in a fresh Cmos battery before doing all this.New battery- check. Restore settings-check. Every cable in my drawer-check. Clear CMOS jumper-check. Cable select and end of connector-check. It won't auto-detect. It just hangs.If I tell my wife I'm buying another HD, she'll shoot me.Mark Quote Link to post Share on other sites
shanenin Posted April 11, 2007 Report Share Posted April 11, 2007 Just to help diagnose, you could use a large hardrive from an other machine. It may help for pin point the problem. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
garmanma Posted April 11, 2007 Author Report Share Posted April 11, 2007 I'm going to swap drives around with my box tomorrow and see what happensMark Quote Link to post Share on other sites
martymas Posted April 11, 2007 Report Share Posted April 11, 2007 did you r try fisk and delete the non dos partition i had some thing similar and i couldent in stall windows on the partitoned hdd that had a recovery console and a branding partition so i had to fidsk and delete that non dos partition so far i havent tried to install windows but it may work ime only guessing here good luck marty Quote Link to post Share on other sites
mikex Posted April 11, 2007 Report Share Posted April 11, 2007 did you r try fisk and delete the non dos partition i had some thing similar and i couldent in stall windows on the partitoned hdd that had a recovery console and a branding partition so i had to fidsk and delete that non dos partition so far i havent tried to install windows but it may work ime only guessing here good luck martyAt this point in the boot process the BIOS can careless what if any OS is on the drive. But I see your reasoning. Does the drive spin up?M Quote Link to post Share on other sites
garmanma Posted April 11, 2007 Author Report Share Posted April 11, 2007 (edited) Yes the components are on the table and I can feel the drive spinning. I thought of Marty's suggestion too and came to the same conclusion Mikex did. I'll play around more in a couple of hoursMark Edited April 11, 2007 by garmanma Quote Link to post Share on other sites
garmanma Posted April 11, 2007 Author Report Share Posted April 11, 2007 Well, the drive works in my machine so it's got to be the BIOS on the other. At least the floppy works so I can try to (shudder) reflash. I've never done that but what's it gonna hurt on that old thing. Anyone got an old 10-20gig HD they want to unload? Mark Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Falcon1986 Posted April 11, 2007 Report Share Posted April 11, 2007 (edited) I hope you realize that in addition to setting the jumper to "SLAVE" or "MASTER" you also have to connect the disk to the correct position on the IDE ribbon cable. The position at the end (when the cable is plugged into the motherboard) is going to be detected as "MASTER" if your disk is jumped for "MASTER" or "CABLE_SELECT", and the position in the middle is going to be detected as "SLAVE" if your disk is jumped for "SLAVE" or "CABLE_SELECT".Seagate SeaTools should be able to tell you if anything is wrong with your disk provided it is even detected. Using the SeaTools for DOS bootable CD you should be also able to "set capacity". Before running any of these tests however, you may want to reset your BIOS to defaults, go back into your BIOS and see if the drive is being detected.Flashing your BIOS can be risky. I flashed my Compaq Presario 5410 desktop a long time ago and it worked perfectly! I was able to use a new 80GB on a PC that previously had a 4GB HDD. This BIOS firmware was not a Compaq firmware; I think it was an Award BIOS that I found for my particular motherboard (it was a Giga-Byte) online. Note that a bad flash can result in a permanently unrecoverable situation. Edited April 11, 2007 by Falcon1986 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
garmanma Posted April 11, 2007 Author Report Share Posted April 11, 2007 Yes I know about the ribbon cable positions, but thank you for reminding me. I know flashing is risky and I've never done it but I'm almost to the point where "what does it matter". I'm going to look around for an old 10-20gig for awhile. My youngest is kinda broke and if I could set up a Linux box for her it would be niceMark Quote Link to post Share on other sites
garmanma Posted October 29, 2007 Author Report Share Posted October 29, 2007 (edited) I dug up this old thread to let you know of a possible solution. A guy over at Bleeping Computer was having the exact same problem. After doing everything that was suggested, he decided what the heck and put the jumper on the 2 pins that showed no configuration on the jumper diagram on the drive and it worked. Don't know why, but it's something else to try before you pitch it if you ever run into this problem. Unfortunately I got rid of mine( lightning strike) so I can't try it to verify Mark Edited October 29, 2007 by garmanma Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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