About partitioning hard drives.

[John Corliss]

A friend gave me an ancient Compaq Armada 1584 DMT laptop with a bad
hard drive. I replaced the hard drive with one that has a 40 gb capacity
and the computer's BIOS will only recognize about 8 gb of the total
capacity. In fact, it would only partition it as such.

I'm thinking that I can maybe put the drive in my desktop (I have a
working adapter) and wipe the drive. Then, if I partition the it say, to
have 5 or 6 partitions, would the laptop be able to see them all or even
use the hard drive?

TIA

 

[Vanguard]

A friend gave me an ancient Compaq Armada 1584 DMT laptop with a bad
hard drive. I replaced the hard drive with one that has a 40 gb
capacity and the computer's BIOS will only recognize about 8 gb of the
total capacity. In fact, it would only partition it as such.

I'm thinking that I can maybe put the drive in my desktop (I have a
working adapter) and wipe the drive. Then, if I partition the it say,
to have 5 or 6 partitions, would the laptop be able to see them all or
even use the hard drive?

Go to the drive maker's web site and get their disk overlay manager
which compensates for an old BIOS that can't handle larger drives. We
don't know which new hard drive you got (brand and model) so no one can
check to see if its maker provides this software.

 

[Mike Walsh]

8 GB is a BIOS limitation for total disk size, not partition size. The normal fix is to get a BIOS update from the PC manufacturer, but because Compaq was taken over by HP this support might no longer exist. An alternative would be to get an overlay utility from the hard drive manufacturer.

 

[jameshanley39]

A friend gave me an ancient Compaq Armada 1584 DMT laptop with a bad
hard drive. I replaced the hard drive with one that has a 40 gb capacity
and the computer's BIOS will only recognize about 8 gb of the total
capacity.

does the BIOS tell you that?
'cos there can be an issue of the BIOS not recognising the capacity of
the drive.. But there's also an issue with fdisk sometimes having a
limit to the partition size it can create, like 137GB.

There's also an issue of, perhaps an early edition of win xp, or
perhaps all. Something like you can't partition or format a FAT32
partition , larger than 32GB. (you can resize it from windows, with
e.g. partition magic)

I'm just making you aware that there are problems similar to yours,
your problem is part of a family of problems! If you're a techie you
might want to know! It can help to a)know what the limit is 'cos e.g.
137GB is the standard fdisk issue. 32GB is the standard windows one.
e.t.c. You've done that. b)to narrow down / rule out what it is that
is making the limit. How early in the process it is. (BIOS , FDISK,
win xp)

In fact, it would only partition it as such.

if it is the BIOS causing the limit, You can flash/upgrade the BIOS.
Though for such an old laptop maybe it still won't be up to date.

As somebody mentioned, perhaps meddling with HDD manufacturer's
software, downloadable from their site.

I'm thinking that I can maybe put the drive in my desktop (I have a
working adapter) and wipe the drive. Then, if I partition the it say, to
have 5 or 6 partitions, would the laptop be able to see them all or even
use the hard drive?

I don't know ''cos, I vaguely recall, my similar experience was of
BIOS not recogjnising a hard drive. The hard drive was 70GB, And
without flashing the BIOS, the hard drive wasn't recognised at all.

 

[John Corliss]

Go to the drive maker's web site and get their disk overlay manager
which compensates for an old BIOS that can't handle larger drives. We
don't know which new hard drive you got (brand and model) so no one can
check to see if its maker provides this software.

Thanks, but I want to avoid using a DDO on the drive. Have heard that
they can cause problems.

By the way, the new hard drive is a Toshiba MK4032GAX:

http://www3.toshiba.co.jp/storage/english/spec/hdd/mk4032gax.htm

Unlike other hard drive manufacturers who provide good software for
setting up their stuff, Toshiba provides nothing and tells you to buy
commercial software:

"Q: My system is not able to recognize all available capacity on my Hard
Disk Drive. What do I need to do to utilize the complete hard drive?

A: There are some systems that are unable to recognize the new larger
Hard Drives on the market. 3rd party software is available that breaks
the "capacity barrier". A suggestion is Disk Manager DiskGo by Ontrack.
Check with your local computer/software supplier for availability or
contact the software manufacturer."

Nah, I want to give multiple partitions a try instead.

 

[John Corliss]

8 GB is a BIOS limitation for total disk size, not partition size. The
normal fix is to get a BIOS update from the PC manufacturer, but
because Compaq was taken over by HP this support might no longer exist.
An alternative would be to get an overlay utility from the hard drive
manufacturer.

Thanks for the info.

I'd get a BIOS update for the computer, but given the fact that to this
point, every single utility and driver I've downloaded from the HP
Compaq FTP site has failed miserably to function correctly, I think I'll
have to pass on that idea.

By the way, Hewlett Packard IME loves to provide inferior drivers for
their older stuff. Apparently this is a ploy to convince you that you
need to buy their newer stuff. If I were to update the BIOS and it hosed
the computer, I'd be out of luck.

 

[kony]

I'd get a BIOS update for the computer, but given the fact that to this
point, every single utility and driver I've downloaded from the HP
Compaq FTP site has failed miserably to function correctly, I think I'll
have to pass on that idea.

By the way, Hewlett Packard IME loves to provide inferior drivers for
their older stuff. Apparently this is a ploy to convince you that you
need to buy their newer stuff. If I were to update the BIOS and it hosed
the computer, I'd be out of luck.

Plenty of people update the bios on their HP/etc, it is the
right solution if an updated bios expands the HDD capacity
support.

The other interesting option given an 8GB limit would be to
get a 266X CF4.0 spec'd, 8GB Compact Flash card and a
noteboook CF-IDE adapter.

 

[CBFalconer]

Thanks, but I want to avoid using a DDO on the drive. Have heard
that they can cause problems.

Simply mount a Linux. Make sure the boot partition is in the first
1024, i.e. partition correctly.

 

[DaveW]

The laptop's motherboard's BIOS is limiting you to only recognizing 8 GB of
harddrive space. There is nothing you can do about that limitation.

 

[John Corliss]

The laptop's motherboard's BIOS is limiting you to only recognizing 8 GB of
harddrive space. There is nothing you can do about that limitation.

Yep, that's what I was afraid of. To make matters worse, in those days
(don't know if they still do this) put the BIOS, or at least a means of
accessing it, on a special partition on the hard drive. I've poured over
their site and there is no BIOS update per se. Just newer versions of
"Compaq Setup for Portables" and I already have the newest version of
that installed on the laptop.

Guess I'm s.o.l.

Oh well, I can live with 8 gb of space for what I want to use the
computer to do (viewing pictures, diagrams and manuals in a shop.)

 

[Andy]

What operating system are you running? Just because the BIOS can
access only the first 8GB of the disk does not mean that the disk
driver for the operating system, which most likely will not use the
BIOS, cannot access the entire drive.

 

[Vanguard]

Thanks, but I want to avoid using a DDO on the drive. Have heard that
they can cause problems.

Only if you have software that battles over the use of the 446-byte
bootstrap area of the MBR (1st sector of 1st hard drive detected by the
BIOS). Examples would be: Acronis recovery manager, multiboot managers,
whole-disk encryption software. If you use Acronis and can manage to
use a rescue CD rather than usurp the MBR bootstrap area, or your
multiboot manager or whole-disk program can chain together multiple
bootstrap programs, then you can share the MBR bootstrap area.
Typically they won't share so you get to pick just one.

Did you check if your mobo has a firmware update for the BIOS to handle
larger drives?

If there is no BIOS update, get a PCI controller card rather than use
the mobo's drive controllers. These daughtercards have their own and
newer BIOS.

Nah, I want to give multiple partitions a try instead.

You could use the software RAID included in Windows XP. You can't use
it on the partition where is installed the operating system; however,
you could leave the rest of the drive space unallocated and then create
a dynamic disk there. The OS is not limited as is the BIOS regarding
volume sizes. You could even add another hard drive and use its
unallocated space to increase the size of the dynamic disk volume (i.e.,
you can create a spanned volume). You won't be able to access this
volume from DOS but then if you use NTFS then you can't get at it from
DOS anyway (unless you use special drivers or utilities). Use Start ->
Help and Support to search on "Dynamic disks and volumes" to get
started.

 

[Vanguard]

Only if you have software that battles over the use of the 446-byte
bootstrap area of the MBR (1st sector of 1st hard drive detected by
the BIOS). Examples would be: Acronis recovery manager, multiboot
managers, whole-disk encryption software. If you use Acronis and can
manage to use a rescue CD rather than usurp the MBR bootstrap area, or
your multiboot manager or whole-disk program can chain together
multiple bootstrap programs, then you can share the MBR bootstrap
area. Typically they won't share so you get to pick just one.

Did you check if your mobo has a firmware update for the BIOS to
handle larger drives?

If there is no BIOS update, get a PCI controller card rather than use
the mobo's drive controllers. These daughtercards have their own and
newer BIOS.



You could use the software RAID included in Windows XP. You can't use
it on the partition where is installed the operating system; however,
you could leave the rest of the drive space unallocated and then
create a dynamic disk there. The OS is not limited as is the BIOS
regarding volume sizes. You could even add another hard drive and use
its unallocated space to increase the size of the dynamic disk volume
(i.e., you can create a spanned volume). You won't be able to access
this volume from DOS but then if you use NTFS then you can't get at it
from DOS anyway (unless you use special drivers or utilities). Use
Start -> Help and Support to search on "Dynamic disks and volumes" to
get started.

Come to think of it, you wouldn't even need to use dynamic disks and
volumes. Just create the 8GB partition in which you install Windows XP.
Then use a partition manager to enlarge it to the full capacity of the
hard drive (i.e., enlarge the partition). The BIOS only needs to find
the boot sector (the first one) of the active partition used to load the
boot program for the OS within the first 1024 cylinders of the hard
drive. If you enable LBA (large block addressing) mode, geometric
translation is used so there is a maximum of 1024 cylinders (the sector
count goes up). LBA mode is a linear addressing scheme from 1 to N
sectors. If your BIOS doesn't support LBA mode then you simply need to
make sure the starting sector for the OS partition is at cylinder 1023,
or less. Since you are creating the first partition to use for the OS
then it will be at cylinder 2 and within reach of the BIOS to load the
first sector of that partition to load the OS boot program.

I don't know how you are installing Windows XP. If it is from a
bootable CD install disc then you should be able to select the entire
hard drive as one partition in which to install the OS.

Just because the BIOS is limited doesn't mean the OS is. The BIOS has
to get to the 1st sector (boot sector) of the active-marked partition to
start loading that OS. The OS itself can handle larger partitions.
Since you are doing a fresh install of the OS, you have nothing to lose
by trying. No disk overlay manager, no multiple 8GB partitions with
just as many drive letters to contend with, no BIOS updating.