76.8GB: 03/15/2001-761-686B-6A6S6PAAC-00

Mansooj · Sat Nov 09, 2002 9:29 am

Hi,

Mobo in question: EpoX EP-8K7A mobo flashed up to Award v6.00PG with an ID string of 03/15/2001-761-686B-6A6S6PAAC-00 (full info at bottom).

Drive in question: IBM Deskstar 76.8GB DTLA-307075 ATA/IDE 7200RPM

I tried the drive on all four IDE connectors, setting master/slave as appropriate without any success in getting it recognized. The system would eventually boot in safe mode without recognizing the drive. I tried IBM's DiskMaster(?) program, but it only locked up during the reboot phase after it supposedly set up some auto-run thingy to allow proper recognition and full formatting. So much for that.

I planned to RMA it, but set it aside, forgot it, and now it's a two year old never-used drive. *shrug*

At any rate, I would like to know if the BIOS I have is capable of supporting drives of this size, and/or if it has one of those 32/64 gig bugs which is causing the problem. Note that I tried the drive with the 32GB clip jumper settings which didn't help either (presumably that should negate those bugs if that were the culprit).

Currently, I have 3 other drives on the connectors, and had one of those on the now empty connector in the past, so the connectors are all functional.

A couple of trailers:

a) The drive's motor seems *very* loud relative to my other drives, though it appears to be spinning up on power-up and otherwise functioning physically. Not sure if this is typical of this model or if it indicates something bad, or if this is just typical of IBM's 7200 drives.

b) Is this BIOS capable of handling a 120GB drive such as a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 drive?

TIA for info. I am anxious to get a fat drive ASAP, but have been burned once and learned my lesson to ask first and bide my time.

complete bios report:
BIOS Date: 03/15/01
BIOS Type: Award Modular BIOS v6.00PG
BIOS ID: 03/15/2001-761-686B-6A6S6PAAC-00
BIOS Eval: 03/20/2001 For AMD761 Chipset
Chipset: AMD 700E rev 19
Superio: VIA 686 rev 64 found at port 7h

(Is there a newer BIOS for me?)

Sat Nov 09, 2002 10:29 am

The drive is most probably bad. Very common thing for IBM DeskStar 75GXP drives...

The latest for EP-8K7A is
03/04/2002-761-686B-6A6S6PAAC-00
03/04/2002 For AMD761 K7 Chipset
http://www.epox.nl/BIOS/8k7a2304.bin

Mansooj · Sat Nov 09, 2002 12:26 pm

Rainbow wrote:The drive is most probably bad. Very common thing for IBM DeskStar 75GXP drives...

After my post I went and tried the drive again (since, to be honest, I forgot if I really tried it *after* I flashed up...turns out I did, after finding relevant notes). I neglected to mention the drive makes a 'knocking' sound every second while connected to a powered-up system. I think it's just being polled, but I'm not savvy enough to know for sure.

I agree the drive is probably just a dud. Time to check IBM's RMA policy. Hope this is a 3 or 5 yr warrantied model. Eeek.

By the way, do you (or anyone else reading) know if these particular drives are just normally quite loud, or are they supposed to be just a bit louder than IBM's 5400rpm Deskstar drives? I'm trying to figure out if I should try to request a replacement of the same model or something similar, price-wise, if it's offered. I need a quiet, high-capacity drive at the moment (5400 is okay, 7200 is preferred).

Rainbow wrote:The latest for EP-8K7A is
03/04/2002-761-686B-6A6S6PAAC-00
03/04/2002 For AMD761 K7 Chipset
http://www.epox.nl/BIOS/8k7a2304.bin

Thanks for the reply and this lead. Time for another upgrade!

Sat Nov 09, 2002 1:19 pm

Mansooj wrote:After my post I went and tried the drive again (since, to be honest, I forgot if I really tried it *after* I flashed up...turns out I did, after finding relevant notes). I neglected to mention the drive makes a 'knocking' sound every second while connected to a powered-up system. I think it's just being polled, but I'm not savvy enough to know for sure.

That's happened with a number of drives I've owned - it's trying to find a track, failing, and resetting itself (recalibrating - finding Track 0). If it makes that knocking noise constantly it's certainly dead. Get onto that RMA site quickly!

Sat Nov 09, 2002 6:59 pm

A typical death-syndrome of IBM DeskStar 75GXP (some 60GXPs too): computer runs and suddenly hangs while accessing HDD. ScanDisk reveals bad blocks. Bad blocks grow. Then (later) you power up the computer - the drive produces some clicking sounds and BIOS will not recognize it.
These drives should not be very noisy - if your is, it's bad.
The best thing is to change the drive for a non-IBM one (maybe WD xxxxJB = 8MB cache).

Mansooj · Sun Nov 10, 2002 6:58 am

Rainbow wrote:A typical death-syndrome of IBM DeskStar 75GXP (some 60GXPs too): computer runs and suddenly hangs while accessing HDD. ScanDisk reveals bad blocks. Bad blocks grow. Then (later) you power up the computer - the drive produces some clicking sounds and BIOS will not recognize it.
These drives should not be very noisy - if your is, it's bad.

Yup. Sounds, in more ways than one, like it's one of those special "DOA" models. I'm so lucky.

I'm glad to hear the drive isn't supposed to be especially noisy, though.

Rainbow wrote:The best thing is to change the drive for a non-IBM one (maybe WD xxxxJB = 8MB cache).

Hehe, well this thing is well beyond return-to-point-of-sale possibility, so I'll just have to hope IBM can replace it with something that actually works.

Thanks for the reply (as well to NickS).