300gb HDD not recognized... award mod v4.51pg

[iambetts]

Hey you bios guru's...have an old pc solely used for music... bought a 300gb hdd but windows isnt recognizing it...

here're the specs. HELP!!! thanks

BIOS Date: 09/22/00
BIOS Type: Award Modular BIOS v4.51PG
BIOS ID: 09/22/2000-693A-686A-2A6LGG0TC
OEM Sign-On: Finlay 693A F3
Chipset: VIA 82C691 rev 68
Superio: VIA 686 rev 34 found at port 7h
OS: WinXP SP2
CPU: Pentium III 933 Mhz MAX: 933 Mhz
BIOS ROM In Socket: Yes
BIOS ROM Size: 256K
Memory Installed: 512 MB
Memory Maximum: Unknown
Memory Slot 01: 256 MB
Memory Slot 02: 256 MB

[KURIAKI]

It's a Seanix Finlay 693A, OEM version of Gigabyte GA-6VM7A+
Latest BIOS update:
http://kuriaki.myftp.org:8245/Archives/ ... ay693a.ima
But I think you need to buy a PCI card controller.

[cp]

first of all your bios needs to detect the hdd so that you're able to boot off it. if your bios hangs on detection there might be a 32GB clip jumper to clip the size (at least for the bios) to 32GB. you can even try to update your bios (or ask for a patch here ;)) but even with a patch your bios won't recognize more than 128GB. BUT that is not a real problem if you use one of the following OS: W2K SP3+, WiXP SP1+Reg.Patch or SP2 or Linux.
all those os use 48bit LBA to access the hdd an thus are able to use hdds upto 144 PetaByte (thats ~144.000.000GB).
so even if your bios shows 32GB, 128GB or whatever (i have a 250GB hdd detected as a 2GB hdd by the bios): if you are able to boot one of the os listed above the full capacity will be available.

once again: NO NEED TO BUY A CONTROLLER!

The WiXP SP1 Reg.Patch goes a little something like this:

"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Atapi\Parameters\ EnableBigLba" "1" (DWORD)

[iambetts]

Ok guys, Same HDD, just I bought an enclosure for it to make it external so I could use it with my laptop... The hdd didnt come with any software so it's neither formatted, or partitioned yet for that matter... Windows Disk Management doesnt even recognize the drive. Im thinking partition magic or any other software would be a waste of time... any help on gettin this thing going? Im losing my mind here!! thanks again lots

[edwin]

I suspect you first need to install drivers for the external enclosure. Then you may see the disk under removable storage in disk management. No sooner.