Can A Larger Hdd Disable Fdd ???

[coolnads]

I Have a PII system ...recently i bought a new 40GB seaget drive..and upgraded my system..adding 128 Mb RAM to it.On installing the 40Gb drive,i found that my compu. wont accept it...on few further inquiries i came to the conclusion that my motherboard or the BIOS (AWARD)do not have the capability to accept a 40Gb hdd..For few hours i was stuck with my non-refundable Hdd....but later i found that my hdd's storage capacity could be reduced by few jumper settings to 32Gb..i did that and Whew...it worked..so far so fine now the problem started....

I installed win ME on my new hdd and removed my old hdd completly...what happened after that was that my floppy drive stoped working..i.e at the bootup time i get a message saying floppy drive error pres F1 to continue...after that every thing goes smoothly.....WHy...and my fdd works fine if i replace my new hdd with the old one with 98 installed on it .(Since i get error at the boot sequence it seems that os has nothing to do with it.)

Could nay one shed some light on how can i get my floopy working.

[Terr]

This is an error in BIOS, even before Windows Boots? That's odd... Perhaps you accidentally bumped the FDD connections when you put in your new hard drive? Does the floppy make noise, and then an error, or is it just silent? Have you changed any BIOS settings with regard to the floppy? It might be worth checking over. (Especially if they are right next to the settings you might have needed to change for your hard drive)

[coolnads]

no man nothing..i know it sounds crazy but i have tried this many times ..i put in the old hdd my floopy drive works..i put in the new one it dosent...and there is no extra noise..just the usual......i had a funny feeling that since my new hdd was too big probably something somehow is stopping my system to use any more storage space (just a crazy idea) or is there some thing in bois settin because ther are portions like ram shadow etc. that i dont have an idea about..rest of the settings are ok..and i dont change the bios settings when i flip the disks (primary master is at AUTO)...well..any thing else

[micael]

If you have several hdd's (incl the new hdd). Check that the jumpers on the hdd's are set pri and sec and that they not are set as cable select.

If it still not work it can be a coflict between the hdd's (and/or CD). Try removing all devices attached to the IDE chain except the new hdd. If this works then add one device at a time and when the fdd stop working you know were the problem are.

A bios upgrade can maybe solve the problem, but it's always a risk when upgrading the bios, be careful if you decide to do that and make this as the last solution.

A good rule, if it's aint broke don't try to repair it !!

Hope this helps !

[sparkant]

Is it possible you twisted the IDE-cable?

Grtz,

[VictorKaum]

Hint for repairing pc's or replacing items:
Always start with checking the cheapest part.
So start with the power connectors; data connectors; jumpers; FDD; HDD; Motherboard.

btw: you can use your full disk capacity without setting any jumpers except the primary and slave option.

Seagate has a prog (Discwizard and Diskmanager) that does DDO (dynamic drive overlay) it deals with any BIOS limitations and is available on their website. Here is the URL to the utilities
http://www.seagate.com/products/disc...tras/A1i1.html

You should check before for known errors between your CMOS, BIOS and DDO progs... then you could use this discwizard prog to install your HDD.

good luck...

(Last hint: do you have enough power to run several disks, your powersupply needs to be able to handle all the devices otherwise you get problems.)

[darkes]

This is really weird. I think I had a similar type of problem when I upgraded a PC with a larger HDD than the BIOS would support. In my case the FDD stopped working as well (Award BIOS), which doesn't really make sense as it is using a different conection to the IDE connection. Maybe they use the same chip on the motherboard?
Anyway, I managed to resolve the problem by installing the type of software that VictorKaum mentioned - which also has the advantage that you can use all of your nice new HDD. As far as I know all DDO software works in the same way, so it does not matter who manafactured your HDD. Completely baffled as to why this worked

[VictorKaum]

Indeed, the manufacturer is not so important, most of the vendors get the DDO program from the same softwarehouse

Seagate, Conner and Quantum use the same softwarehouse for their DDO progs so you could use them all. The only reason to use the program of your harddiskvendor is cause it will properly recognize your disk and give the info that's on the label (this is only an esthetical reason).

I used DDO even on some 80486 and it worked fine.