40GB: 09/23/1999-693-596B-8673-7000VX..C

[pep]

I installed a Seagate ST340016A 40 GB disk in a Leadtek WinFast.
The CMOS configuration cannot be manually adjusted so I left it AUTO.

Using the Seagate utilities I installed successfully a WinXP and it works great.

But sometimes on booting the BIOS only recognizes the disk as a 33 GB and I cannot start XP.

If I rerun the Seagate tools the BIOS sees again a 40 GB and all works.

Can you give me some help again? Thanks.

FYI

BIOS Date: 09/23/99
BIOS Type: Award Modular BIOS v4.51PGM
BIOS ID: 09/23/1999-693-596B-8673-7000VX..C
BIOS Eval: Leadtek Research Inc. WinFast 7000VX. Date : 09-23-1999
Chipset: VIA 82C691 rev 68
Superio: ITE 8673 rev 1 found at port 279h

[NickS]

OK, I found the Leadtek 7000VX BIOS at Leadtek's ftp site in the "mb" folder - ftp://203.66.138.20/mb/. I'll lokk at it and see if it supports large HDD or can be patched.

[NickS]

OK, that bios is:
BIOS ID string: 10/27/2000-693-596B-8673-7000VX..C-00
BIOS OEM string: Leadtek Research Inc. WinFast 7000VX. Date : 10-27-2000

It supports disks >32 GiB (up to 128 GiB). Download and flash that to solve the problem.

[pep]

Thank you NickS, I will read how to update my bios and keep you posted on the results.

Nice to have such a great help!!

[pep]

I'm clueless. I flashed the new bios without problems. After setting the BIOS to default values I rebooted and the disk only had 33 GB. In an other thread I find that it was necessary to reset the BIOS so I extacted the small clock batery. After rebooting the problem was still here. If I boot with the seagate disk wizard and then make a hot reboot the BIOS recognizes the 40 GB correctly.

Can you help me? I'm out for the weekend, so no need to hurry but any ideas will be appreciated.

Thanks.

[ajzchips]

Checked the 32GB clip?

[pep]

Yes, it's as master drive in the secondari controler.

[NickS]

If you've checked that the drive is jumpered correctly, and the BIOS is reporting 33 GB I would guess that Disc Wizard has told the drive to report 33GB. Is there a function in Seagate's Disc Wizard setup for setting the reported capacity ? There is in IBM's version, and it has caused exactly this problem in the past. If there is you nedd to tell it to report full capacity to the BIOS. This information gets written not to the Master Boot Record (MBR) but to the drive's internal software (I would say firmware, but this could be writen to a "private" part of disc rather than to flash).

If the BIOS is reporting 40 GB but on booting the operating system you find you only have 33 GB then the drive parameters in the Master Boot Record need to be rewritten.

[pep]

There is this option in disk wizard to set 33 GB. Althoug I think I was careful enough to don't set it does somebody know how can I reset it?

The BIOS reports 40 GB after I run the disk wizard and then all works great, so there is something the wizard changes but what?

[NickS]

The Disk Wizard can do a couple of thiings. One is that it may be able to tell the Disk to report a smaller size to the BIOS so that the BIOS will not hang. The other is that it puts a piece of software into the Master Boot Record of the HDD which loads a Dynamic Disc Overlay. The DDO then lives in memory and intercepts all the calls to that part of the BIOS which handles the HDD, using its own routines to access the full capacity of the HDD. As it is only loaded by a disc which has been prepared by Disk Wizard, an ordinary DOS boot diskette or a boot CD will not see the full capacity of the HDD.

I do not have a Seagate drive*, so I do not know whether or how their version of the Disk Manager allow yo to set the reported drive size back to 40 Gb.

*Well, I do - one is 20 Mb, one is 150 Mb and the third is 545 Mbyte.

[pep]

I think I should repartition my disk. At this point I've loaded the DDO and I can work correctly even if the BIOS says my disk is 33 GB.

Since I will need to save some data I don't know when I could post the results. Thanks again for your help and explanations.