Old Machine Won't Recognize HDD

  • Thread starter Thread starter geezer
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geezer

I have a friend who is always messing with things - he has inherited
an old computer that a neighbor threw away. He says he got it
running, but that it has a very small HDD. He wants to put a larger
(say 8 GB) in it, but it won't recognize the drive at all.

He lives 100 miles away, so I can't see the machine to judge for
myself what the problem is. I suggested to him that maybe the BIOS
would not recognize larger drives, or that he may have to set a
drive's cylinder, tracks, etc manually in the BIOS.

This is what he says:

This eMachines has a motherboard I have never heard of and an AMIBIOS
of limited capabilities. A drop down menu offers specific combinations
of numbers you can select. None rise to the magnitude of what was in
there previously.

Changing out three hard drives seems to have the BIOS thoroughly
confused. Not it recognizes none of them. Individually, or even as
master/slave.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks

Geezer
 
geezer said:
I have a friend who is always messing with things - he has inherited
an old computer that a neighbor threw away. He says he got it
running, but that it has a very small HDD. He wants to put a larger
(say 8 GB) in it, but it won't recognize the drive at all.

He lives 100 miles away, so I can't see the machine to judge for
myself what the problem is. I suggested to him that maybe the BIOS
would not recognize larger drives, or that he may have to set a
drive's cylinder, tracks, etc manually in the BIOS.

This is what he says:

This eMachines has a motherboard I have never heard of and an AMIBIOS
of limited capabilities. A drop down menu offers specific combinations
of numbers you can select. None rise to the magnitude of what was in
there previously.

Changing out three hard drives seems to have the BIOS thoroughly
confused. Not it recognizes none of them. Individually, or even as
master/slave.

Does anyone have any ideas?
Click to expand...

Sometimes the BIOS can be updated to handle larger HDs, but it sounds like
this may be difficult unless you can find the mobo manufacturer and an
update. But it almost doesn't matter, if the mobo supports PCI, you could
just get yourself a Promise Ultra100 TX2 PCI controller card off eBay for
$10-20 shipped, and use that instead. Nothing says you HAVE to use the
on-board controllers and be stuck w/ whatever limitations exist therein. Of
course, you could also consider a similar approach w/ SATA HDs as well.
Just get an appropriate extension card.

Jim
 
I have a friend who is always messing with things - he has inherited
an old computer that a neighbor threw away. He says he got it
running, but that it has a very small HDD. He wants to put a larger
(say 8 GB) in it, but it won't recognize the drive at all.

He lives 100 miles away, so I can't see the machine to judge for
myself what the problem is. I suggested to him that maybe the BIOS
would not recognize larger drives, or that he may have to set a
drive's cylinder, tracks, etc manually in the BIOS.

This is what he says:

This eMachines has a motherboard I have never heard of and an AMIBIOS
of limited capabilities. A drop down menu offers specific combinations
of numbers you can select. None rise to the magnitude of what was in
there previously.

Changing out three hard drives seems to have the BIOS thoroughly
confused. Not it recognizes none of them. Individually, or even as
master/slave.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks

Geezer
Click to expand...

See other post and tell him to put one drive in with correct hard
drive jumper settings,
http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/hard.html

and pull power cord out and clear BIOS and then retry.
HTH :)
 
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