Promise card Ultra66, Win98SE; WD 80GB not recognized?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ablang
  • Start date Start date
A

Ablang

I just installed a Promise Ultra66 PCI IDE Controller card (drivers
installed) on my P3-500 256MB Win98SE system which probably only
recognizes 32GB of HD space. The card boots up fine in the POST, and
recognizes my WD 80GB HD. Problem is, W98SE doesn't see it. What
am I doing wrong?

I have an 8GB HD on the primary master of the mboard, while the 80GB
drive is on the primary master of the card, with master jumper set
with the C: drive as the boot priority. Under devices, Windows
notices the card under SCSI devices, and it is last in the mboard's
boot order.


===
"There are two cardinal sins from which all the others spring: impatience and laziness."
-- Franz Kafka
 
Ablang said:
I just installed a Promise Ultra66 PCI IDE Controller card (drivers
installed) on my P3-500 256MB Win98SE system which probably only
recognizes 32GB of HD space. The card boots up fine in the POST, and
recognizes my WD 80GB HD. Problem is, W98SE doesn't see it. What
am I doing wrong?
Click to expand...

did you fdisk and format it?
 
did you fdisk and format it?
Click to expand...

I'm not sure how I can, considering I can't even see the
drive! Besides, even if I put in a DOS boot disk, doesn't that mean
the card won't work, because only the Win drivers were installed?


===
"There are two cardinal sins from which all the others spring: impatience and laziness."
-- Franz Kafka
 
Ablang said:
I'm not sure how I can, considering I can't even see the
Click to expand...

Computers don't have eyes, so you must mean "see" metaphorically.
Of course it won't show up in "My Computer" until you fdisk and
format it.

When you type "fdisk" in an MS-DOS box, can you select the drive?
And BTW, have you downloaded the updated fdisk from Microsoft's
site? You know, the one needed to handle drives bigger than those
anticipated when Windows 98 was released?

Did the drive come with instructions?
 
I want to thank everyone that attempted to help me. Seems like some
of you were right on the ball. I thought to myself, maybe there is a
conflict with 2 hard drives (1 on MB, 1 on Promise card) trying to be
primary master. So I switch the 80GB drive to be on the secondary
controller of the card (still master as SM). This may not have done
it.

What tipped me off was that I decided to look at the Device
Manager. The Promise card was showing up under SCSI controllers. The
80GB drive shows up under Disk Drives as well as the cards POST test,
but not under windows. So I look at the properties for the HD. I
noticed that no driver files were installed. I remembered that the
new drive came with a CD. The Western Digital Data Lifeguard Tools.
I installed the program, and it proceeds to quickly format and help me
partition my drive into 32GB, 32GB, 15GB (to reduce wasted cluster
sizes) using it as a storage and not as a boot device. Since I don't
have any plans to do any video editing, I don't see a need for bigger
partition sizes.

So now Windows can see it. Yay! Thanks everybody!


===
In the library, with the shotgun, fighting off the Flood.
-- the best part of playing "Halo" on the XBox.
 
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