BIOS Updates forum

Posted: **Mon Jun 05, 2006 9:41 pm**

Hi

I am new on this forum. I need some help making work a 40gb western digital IDE hard drive on my old socket 7 mobo (Chaintech agm2, award bios 4.51, VIA chipset amd k6-3). The problem is the following: the hard drive is only recognized as a 10 gb in BIOS. As far as I know, 10 gb is not a BIOS limit. Actually, my patched BIOS is supposed to support up to 128gb hdds. Note that my previous hdd was a 10gb and that the 40gb is second hand and was partionned in another computer. I have tried many solutions but none of them have worked. I have cleared CMOS, written zeros to drive, tried setting hard drive size using wd's data lifguard tools (it actually says my 40gb does not support this feature). I have also tried many jumper and cabling configurations. I do not know if I should bring back the hdd to the store. Mabye that my BIOS is not configured correctly ( I am not an expert ).

Your help would be welcomed.

Posted: **Tue Jun 06, 2006 2:10 am**

What you shoud try:
Set your 40GB HDD to single-Master and conect it to your motherboard. Do not attach a slave drive (CDROM or second HDD) to this cable.
Start computer and enter Bios. Use the Auto-detect feature of your Bios.

What Cylinder/Head/Sector and size is reported ?
Is LBA auto-enabled ? If not enable manually.

Posted: **Tue Jun 06, 2006 11:36 pm**

Thanks for the reply Denniss

I have done as you told me and connected my HDD to mobo as single. I have enabled LBA and the BIOS report is the following:

Size: 10002
cyls: 1216
heads: 255
Precomp: 0
Landz: 19385
Sector: 63

Note that my 10gb HDD reports the same parameters.

Thanks again for your help

Posted: **Tue Jun 06, 2006 11:48 pm**

Are you used Auto-detect?

Posted: **Wed Jun 07, 2006 2:05 am**

yes I have used auto-detect

Posted: **Wed Jun 07, 2006 1:56 pm**

Are you sure the BIOS was patched correctly?

Can you post its information?

Posted: **Wed Jun 07, 2006 3:34 pm**

I found my current BIOS on wims.rainbow-software.org. It said the patched BIOS would support up to 128gb hdd.

Here is the info:

BIOS Type: Award Modular BIOS v4.51 pg
BIOS ID: 11/02/1999-MVP3-586-8661-2A5LEC39C-00
OEM Sing-On: 11/02/1999

Thanks for your help!

Posted: **Thu Jun 08, 2006 2:09 pm**

Are you sure it flashed correctly?

Normally, the Wim's team adds something to the BIOS Message line stating it was patched...

Posted: **Thu Jun 08, 2006 11:39 pm**

What happens if you set the 32GB capacity limitation jumper ? Does it still detect 10GB or does it detect 32GB now ?

Posted: **Sun Jun 11, 2006 10:28 pm**

KachiWachi wrote:Are you sure it flashed correctly?

Normally, the Wim's team adds something to the BIOS Message line stating it was patched...

Not with this one. This is indeed the 128GB version, I downloaded it and checked for the bug, not there.

Posted: **Mon Jun 12, 2006 1:55 pm**

Um...perhaps that should be updated?

Otherwise...how are we to know for sure that he indeed has the correct file loaded?

BIOS Updates forum

40gb hard drive recognized as 10gb

40gb hard drive recognized as 10gb