New Hard Drive Setup Issues

xarzu · Jul 26, 2010, 08:57 AM

New Hard Drive Setup Issues
===========================
My hard drive crashed and so I got a replacement.
I set the BIOS settings to [AUTO] but I wonder if that was the smartest thing to do.
The size that it displayed seemed to be a little low. I am wondering if maybe I should have done something other than set the BIOS to automatic determine the settings for the new hard drive.
I suspect I did something wrong because when I have tried to install the Ubuntu Operating System it is stuck on 36 % when formating and/or configuring the hard drive.
How do I go about making the BIOS hard drive settings by hand?

Dyre Straits · Jul 26, 2010, 09:21 AM

First of all: Is this a SATA or PATA [IDE] hard drive?

What size is the drive?

What kind of discrepancy are you seeing between what the drive states and what you see in the BIOS? [Keep in mind that manufacturers universally use a higher number to define the hard drive than what you will realistically see in the computer itself. Example: An advertised 500 GB HDD will actually show about 465 GB in size on the computer. A 1 TB HDD will actually show about 931 GB on the computer. It has to do with how the manufacturer calculates disk size vs. how the computer "sees" it.] So, if your discrepancy is similar to these examples, it appears things are correct.

The rest of the problem may be due to it being a SATA drive. At some point of installation, most OSes require that a 3rd party SATA driver be installed in order to recognize the hard drive. If you're skipping that step, it could explain the cause of the installation halting at the point it does.

xarzu · Jul 26, 2010, 11:54 AM

It is an IDE (PATA) drive of about 320 gigs.

I do think there is something screwy going on. I have two hard drives in the system. The old slave drive BIOS settings has this:

CHS CAPACITY 8422 MB
MAX LBA CAPACITY 120034 MB

The new master hard drive has this:

CHS CAPACITY 8422 MB
MAX LBA CAPACITY 8422 MB

I know that the size of the new hard drive is about 320 gigs. So what I am wondering now is that maybe we have gone beyone what the old motherboard and BIOS cand handle for a the size of the hard drive. If so, maybe a partition is in order. What do you think?

Tyrsonswood · Jul 26, 2010, 12:14 PM

A partition probably won't get around a bios limitation.

Judas · Jul 26, 2010, 05:09 PM

you most likely have gone beyond the realms of the support max capacity...

you can see if that drive has a gigabyte limit of some sort.. but usually that will reduce the available amount significantly...

that must be a very old motherboard though.... can you post the full specs?

xarzu · Jul 26, 2010, 07:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Judas

you most likely have gone beyond the realms of the support max capacity...

you can see if that drive has a gigabyte limit of some sort.. but usually that will reduce the available amount significantly...

that must be a very old motherboard though.... can you post the full specs?

The screen says, regarding the motherboard:

Award Medallion BIOS V6.0
COPYRIGHT (C) 1984-2001, Award Software, Inc.

ACPI BIOS Revision 1003. LV

Inter (R) Gleron (TM) 1200 MHz
Memory Test 261120K OK+ 1024 shared memory

and so on...

I think the motherboard cannot handle a 320 gig hard drive. Unless I can get some magic from you, I am going to take the new hard drive back to the store and swap out the old slave hard drive and make it the new master drive.

Judas · Jul 26, 2010, 09:43 PM

that would probably be your best bet xarzu.....

Sihastru · Jul 27, 2010, 01:26 PM

It says Celeron 1200, so best bet is that it's a Celeron Tualatin on Socket 370. For PGA370 we have Intel's 810, 815 and 820 (rare). We do have VIA, SIS, ALI and others, but if you have one of those, then the motherboard should be fried by now.

These come with the first ICH iterations, ICH aka ICH0, and ICH2. The first one indeed does not support LBA 48bit, but the second one does. You need to enable it in bios. Letting everything AUTO on such an old BIOS is not going to detect the correct settings.

Check for an LBA 48 setting in your bios. Probably somewhare under Storage, Access mode, it's hard to say what the setting is exactly called.

Jul 26, 2010, 08:57 AM	#1
xarzu HardwareHeaven Newbie Join Date: Apr 2008 Posts: 4 Rep Power: 0	New Hard Drive Setup Issues New Hard Drive Setup Issues =========================== My hard drive crashed and so I got a replacement. I set the BIOS settings to [AUTO] but I wonder if that was the smartest thing to do. The size that it displayed seemed to be a little low. I am wondering if maybe I should have done something other than set the BIOS to automatic determine the settings for the new hard drive. I suspect I did something wrong because when I have tried to install the Ubuntu Operating System it is stuck on 36 % when formating and/or configuring the hard drive. How do I go about making the BIOS hard drive settings by hand?

Jul 26, 2010, 11:54 AM	Thread Starter #3
xarzu HardwareHeaven Newbie Join Date: Apr 2008 Posts: 4 Rep Power: 0	Re: New Hard Drive Setup Issues It is an IDE (PATA) drive of about 320 gigs. I do think there is something screwy going on. I have two hard drives in the system. The old slave drive BIOS settings has this: CHS CAPACITY 8422 MB MAX LBA CAPACITY 120034 MB The new master hard drive has this: CHS CAPACITY 8422 MB MAX LBA CAPACITY 8422 MB I know that the size of the new hard drive is about 320 gigs. So what I am wondering now is that maybe we have gone beyone what the old motherboard and BIOS cand handle for a the size of the hard drive. If so, maybe a partition is in order. What do you think?

Jul 27, 2010, 01:26 PM	#8
Sihastru Never been clicked Join Date: Dec 2009 Posts: 433 Rep Power: 45 System Specs	Re: New Hard Drive Setup Issues It says Celeron 1200, so best bet is that it's a Celeron Tualatin on Socket 370. For PGA370 we have Intel's 810, 815 and 820 (rare). We do have VIA, SIS, ALI and others, but if you have one of those, then the motherboard should be fried by now. These come with the first ICH iterations, ICH aka ICH0, and ICH2. The first one indeed does not support LBA 48bit, but the second one does. You need to enable it in bios. Letting everything AUTO on such an old BIOS is not going to detect the correct settings. Check for an LBA 48 setting in your bios. Probably somewhare under Storage, Access mode, it's hard to say what the setting is exactly called. __________________ There are more things in heaven and earth then are dreamt of in your philosophy. Intel Core i7 3820 \| Corsair H80 \| Asus P9X79 \| Kingston HyperX T1 Black 32GB DDR3 \| Gigabyte 8800 GTS 512 \| 2xIntel X25-M 160GB RAID0 + 2xWD 1TB Green RAID1 \| Asus Xonar DX \| Asus ES2-750 \| Sony OptiArc DVD+/-RW \| Corsair AX850 Gold \| Fractal Design Define R3 Titanium \| Dell 3007WFP-HC2 30" 2560x1600 \| Corsair SP2500 \| Logitech UltraX Premium \| CM Storm Advance \| Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64bit