should I update to beta version of bios?

[jspeybro]

Hello, I have an asus P5A mobo. There were 2 BIOS-updates available.
It's an award BIOS. the old BIOS ID was 12/17/98-ALADDIN5-<<P5A>>-00
that was BIOS revision 1005.
I upgraded to BIOS-revision 1007a ( bios date: 07/16/99)

There was also revision 1011.005 (beta 5).
Version 1007a still didn't support my 40GB harddisk, so I used the 32GB-jumper on the disk.
I installed windows 2000 on the first partition, but strange things are happening now.
If I open some of the directories on the second partition, I get the message "The disk in Drive D is not formatted. Do you want to format it now?"
This happens with subdirectories of partition.
When I get this message, I get this warning in the system-logs:

An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk0\DR0 during a paging operation.

anybody knows whats going on or where I should start looking?
Is it caused by the jumper I used on the disk to limit it to 32GB?
Should I upgrade to that beta version of the bios and hope that it will support harddisks over 32GB?

Johan

[Rainbow]

The BETA BIOS supports HDDs up to 128GB.

[jspeybro]

Hmmm, Ok, the update solved the 32GB problem, but the "format" problem is still there.

any ideas what might be causing this?

Johan

[Rainbow]

I'd test the drive using the software from its manufacturer. If it's OK, maybe repartition and reformat will help (backup all data first).

[jspeybro]

This is what I actually did when this error started to appear:

I had a computer with a very slow mobo (sis530 chipset) I was running win2000 on it on the 40GB disk.

then I got this asus mobo from a friend. So I updated the bios,
changed the mobo's, installed windows 2000 again after formating the first partition.
When I was using the other mobo, I didn't have this problem. So I don't think it's the harddrive (although I will test it).

Maybe I should ask it somewhere else, as this is a bios-forum

[KachiWachi]

Is there a "Disk Manager" (overlay) on the drive?

Maybe it is conflicting with the BIOS, Win2000, is damaged, etc...

[jspeybro]

No, I didn't use a drive overlay as it was'nt needed on the previous mobo. I think I solved it though. after updateing the bios to 1011.005, I removed the jumper to select master instead of the jumper to select 32GBlimit. I noticed this because suddenly the drive was detected as a slave.
I also replaced a faulty piece of RAM.
Now I only get this warnings in the system-log:

The driver detected that the device \Device\Harddisk0\DR0 has its write cache enabled. Data corruption may occur.

I did have some problems with corrupted data (not sure if it was the master/slave-problem or the memory), so I disabled the write cache, but now I get warnings like this:

The driver disabled the write cache on device \Device\Harddisk0\DR0.

I think it was related to the memory, so I think I'll enable the write cache again and see what it gives. I tested the drive thoroughly, but it didn't have any problems, so the it's not the disk.[/quote]