BIOS not detecting new hard drive - update required? help!

Factual Questions
1

I’m trying to install a new hard drive in a moderately old PC; the drive is a seagate ST340015A and the PC is a 400mhz Pentium II

The BIOS details are:
Date: 03/02/99
Type: Award Modular Bios v4.51PG
ID: 03/02/99=i440BX-W977-2A69KM4EC-00
OEM sign on: W6147F4 v1.3 030299
Chipset Intel 440BX/ZX rev 3
Superio: Winbond 977TF rev 0 found at port 3F0h

Regardless of whether I set the BIOS to autodetect or put in the settings manually, the computer hangs when it gets round to detecting the drive at boot time.

I don’t beliee the problem lies with a fault in the drive itself as I have two identical drives here and it does the same with either.

Should I re-flash the BIOS? how on earth do I find the right upgrade?

2

i had this problem … it’s almost certainly caused by the fact that
your bios does not recognise disks larger than 32 GB.
There are a few alternatives :-
Flash yer bios, eg this
Use a software solution (eg seagate diskwizard)
Get a disk controller card (eg promise)
also, see this thread …

3

I managed to find a patched BIOS file at http://wims.host.sk that fits the bill exactly (right motherboard, chipset, biod ID etc and claims to fix the problem, but it is just a .bin file and I can’t work out what to do with it…

4

you need to download a tool to flash bios. different tools for different bios’s.

some can be run throught windows, but most need to be run from dos , so you will probably need a dos boot disk too.

if you can’t find it post your bios type AMI , Award, Phoenix etc and somebody will point you in the right direction

5

It’s all up there in my opening post…

6

Do you still have the old HD installed? If so, a look at the master/slave jumpers might be in order. I know you have experience a plenty with this stuff, so I’m just asking if you may have over looked it.

7

I checked the jumpers and it doesn’t work as a slave on the primary channel or as master on the secondary one (or cable select anywhere).

The wim.hosts.sk site says that there is a 32GB limit on hard drives for this BIOS(the.bin patch I downloaded is supposed to fix it)

I think I need to get a program called awdflash.exe that will use the .bin file to update it.

8

Hmph… not sure what to do now; I have the awdflash program and I have the bin file to go withit, but I booted from a floppy and ran awdflash/? to find out the usage - it showed me the switches etc, then froze the system.

I’m reluctant to use it in case it fails partway through the update.

9

YOU are playing with fire at this point in that you have a hacked MB BIOS and the install applet that is crashing your system.

You really should be replacing the PC (or the MB) at this point as 4 years is pretty long in the tooth for a MB to be handling new stuff. Anyway your best bet is to get one of these for 20.00 - 30.00 or so. I have one and it works beautifully.

10

I just did the same thing yesterday, only with a Maxtor drive. Neither the BIOS nor the included installation software would see it until I put it by itself on its own Ultra ATA cable. (The manual says to expect trouble if the drive is on an old-style cable, especially sharing it with another device.) When it was finally detected, the installation software set up a drive-overlay patch that loads very early in the boot process, and all is OK now.

11

Try: http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/

also, be sure you set your bios to a safe boot mode so it can recognize new equipment that you put in.

12

Flash the BIOS (the BIN can probably be used by some kind of tool, someone’s posted Seagate’s website already. For my MoBo, it’s called AWDFLASH.EXE), check all the cables, and check your Master/Slave settings.

13

OK, I flashed the BIOS on my (identical) test machine back here at the office and it seems to have done the trick - the new drive is now recognised at startup.

14

Note that the Seagate’s install software has utilities for checking if the BIOS is the problem, etc. You should have run this first. Then proceeded from there.

Also “Safe mode” has no meaning in the context of BIOS settings.

I would never flash a BIOS downloaded from some random site. A respectable MB maker has the right BIOS available from their web site. Use that first and only. They will also tell you the right procedure for doing this. If you are unsure of what to do, don’t flash your BIOS. Period. (And if your MB maker is not respectable, you have worse problems than not recognizing a HD.)