200GB: asus a7v266-e/aa

[chuck108]

Hi,
I have been having problems with my new maxtor 200G hard drive. It keeps trashing directories or files and I end up having to reformat and reinstall windows. I was hoping you could give some insight as to what the problem may be and how to fix. Windows upgrade? Bios upgrade? I have partitioned it for 125 and 75 g. My motherboard is an Asus a7v266-e. bios:
award bios v6.0 01/04/02
bios id: 01/04/2002-vt8366a-a7v266-e
oem signon: asus a7v266-e/aa acpi bios rev 1005
chipset: via 82c3099 rev 0
os:win98 se ver 4.10.2222 a
cpu: Amd athlon 1200 Mhz
bios rom:256k
mem installed: 512 mb
there is also an overlay installed by the maxtor utilities.
any help would be appreciated as I tire of losing info and reformatting.
Thanks,
Chuck

[Denniss]

1005 is a very old Bios ...

Latest is 1015 Beta-003
ftp://ftp.asuscom.de/pub/ASUSCOM/BIOS/S ... 15e_03.zip

As I don't know whether your mainboard supports HDD over 128/137GB please remove all Overlay things installed by Maxtor Software .
Then tell us what your Bios reports as drive size

BTW - Problem should be OS related - even if the drive is formatted beyond 128/137GB your OS does not support this and data beyond 128/137GB might be lost (and will as you see) .

[chuck108]

Hi,
Right now my bios is reporting the following:
Maxtor 6y200p0
type: auto
cyl: 1024
head: 255
sec: 63
chs capacity: 8422mb
max lba capacity:8455mb
multi sector transfer:max
pio mode:4
ultra dma mode:5
if I remove the overlay, will I lose the info on the drive or even be able to access it after? If I won't be able to access it, there are some things I'd have to back up first.
I also noticed that win 98 se doesn't support more than 512mb ram memory even though my board supports 3 g. If I put any more than 512 in, things start going screwy.
What will the bios upgrade help with?
Thanks,
Chuck

[chuck108]

Hi,
I also wanted to ask you about the OS barrier. I thought that if I partitioned the hard drive into 125 & 75 that would be under the barrier limits. Is this not right? Or are they talking about the size of the whole drive no matter what you partition it into?
Thanks,
Chuck

[chuck108]

Hi,
I just ran the maxtor diagnostic and it gave the following which is different from what the bios reported:
lba sectors:398297088(203.93 gb)
chs 416x16x63(2.15gb)
cyl 395136
heads 16
spt 63
partitions:135001mb
68932mb

Chuck

[Denniss]

The 128/137 barrier affects the whole drive and not partition size .
Writing data into an area above 128/137GB may cause Data loss/File system screw-up

Win9x should work fine with up to 1GB - you just need to edit the system.ini - search the VCACHE section and add the following line :
MaxFileCache=524288

The latest Asus Bios may support the big HDD without using any drive overlay stuff but to use the full capacity of your drive within Win9x you might need special drivers or you need to upgrade your OS to W2K or XP or Linux

[chuck108]

Hi,
The fix for the ram memory worked. Amazing, even the people at the memory web site, where I bought more memory, didn't know that one. Thanks. I'm going to upgrade the bios and Os to winXP. I'll post as to how it turns out.

Chuck

[georgep]

According to this page at ASUS, it supports > 128 GB

http://www.asus.com/support/english/tec ... index.aspx

even with the BIOS you have. But I'd still upgrade the BIOS to the latest.

[chuck108]

Hi,
I have upgraded bios(it now sees 200g HD) and have installed XP. Everything is working great! I have one more question in regards to the difference between using the NT or fat32 system. It(XP) said to use the NT if your HD is over 32g. Is it necessary? I am networked to 2 other computers here at home which operate under (win98se)fat32. If I go to the NT system will it affect the ability of the other computers to interact with mine or the ability to access printer which is connected to mine?
Thanks,
Chuck

[NickS]

The file system should not affect your ability to share, though XP may need you to set permissions and sharing more explicitly.