Incorrect HD settings in AMI Bios

[djschotte]

Hi!
Can't seem to set up my Fujitsu 40GB correctly. Using AMI Bios version from 29.11.02. HD size/parameters not recognised correctly. Tried manually setting them by selecting the "user" option but couldn't manually set the correct sectors/cylinders etc.

Can anybody help?

Thanks,
Scott

[NickS]

- Can you set type to "Auto" rather than "User", and mode to "Auto" or "LBA" rather than CHS/Normal/Large ?"
- Have you used this drive in another machine, or is it new ?

[djschotte]

Have tried setting it to Auto but that doesn't work. Drive was previously used in a set-top box with HD. It is however a standard fujitsu HD. Managed strangely enough to install Red Hat 7.3 on it. Linux somehow recognised the disk but when it came to booting, the HD was shown with a size of 0GB. I was looking at getting hold of Ontrack Disk Manager which is a Drive Overlay software.

I haven't any other ideas.

Scott

[NickS]

Find a copy of "IDEID.EXE", put it on a bootable diskette and see what it makes of the drive. There should be later utilities for reporting the capabilities of ATA drives, but I haven't come across one yet.
It doesn't sound as though the drive is reporting itself correctly; if the AMI BIOS is 2002 it should certainly be capable of handling 40GB. The only Fujitsu utilities I know of are for changing the UDMA mode of the drive. Is there a firmware update available for your model ?

[djschotte]

Thanks for your help. I ended up installing Ontrack DiskManager which is a Drive Overlay SW. This somehow seems to "go around" BIOS and recognised/formatted the HD as required.

Only disadvantage is that I can't use this faster HD to install an OS as the DiskManager application runs only under windows. Need to see if there is some kind of DOS application.

Cheers,
Scott

[Denniss]

What's your mainboard ?
According to the date yyou told us it should be new enough to support even bigger HDD

[djschotte]

Elitegroup K7s5a