[Canuck]

Wondering if you can give me any help, trying to get my old Armada to recognize the rest of the new hard drive I had installed?


Was getting warnings that a failure of my hard drive was imminent. One of the computer support staff where my wife works volunteered to replace the drive. He replaced the original 4 GB drive with a Hitachi 30gb 4200rpm notebook drive, 16Jun2004, provided me with a disk to boot the PC from and directions shown in italics listed below to install Win 98, however, the machine only recognizes 4 GB. Any idea what can be done to rectify this?

Armada 1750 PC Pentium II ® 333mhz, Running Win 98, Rev 4.10.222


This is the sequence of events that occur on this PC upon power up::

1> COMPAQ screen

2> EZ-BIOS initialized
hold CTRL
insert disk
press a key

3> This driver provided by Oak Tech, etc.
Device : MSCD001
Transfer : Programmed I?O
No Devices : 1

4> MSCDEX Ver 2.25 etc.
Drive D = driver
A:\


I would recommend after you format the drive C, to install windows, is to make the folder on the c drive, create windows folder then an options folder then a cabs folder, then change to this directory, should say c:\windows\options\cabs

5> In DOS, formatted drive “format c”. then created folders as directed.

Now type xcopy32 d:\win98\*.* /s and hit enter, this will copy all the files you need to install windows to the directory you are in, c:\windows\options\cabs...

6> Seemed to work OK. During the "xcopy" the following files were not found:

Base4.CAB (machine paused here, hit Enter and it proceeded)
Base5.CAB
Base6.CAB

eject the cd, type setup.exe and install windows from there, .will work alot better for you. It will ask for a different directory like windows.000, change it to c:\windows when installing and happy installing...
7> after "xcopy", changed back to "D drive" with Win 98 CD in drive and typed "setup.exe", Win98 install started and seemed to proceed OK.

However, when viewed via "My Computer" Drive C only shows 3.97 GB (disk drive appears as a GENERIC IDE DISK TYPE 65 ).

Though I might have missed something, so I went back and did the whole thing again, right from reformatting the drive with the same result.

Any help getting this old PC to recognize all of the new hard drive would be greatly appreciated.

Jim Campbell

Thanks

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Hi Canuck

The first thing I would like you to check is whether the full drive size is being recognised by the bios.

Reboot the laptop (or power it on), as soon as you see the flashing cursor appear in the corner of the screen, press the F10 key a couple of times. This should get you into the bios (or system setup utility). Somewhere in there (possibly under the heading 'storage'), you should find information about the hard drive. See what capacity the drive is reported as being & let me know.

I know you said the laptop was an Armada 1750, but do you know the full model number? This may be written on the underside of the laptop & will look something like this : 6333/T/4000/D/0/1 for example.

Do you also know the model number of the drive? This will be written on the actual drive itself & should something like : DK23CA-30

[Samm]

Hi Canuck

The first thing I would like you to check is whether the full drive size is being recognised by the bios.

Reboot the laptop (or power it on), as soon as you see the flashing cursor appear in the corner of the screen, press the F10 key a couple of times. This should get you into the bios (or system setup utility). Somewhere in there (possibly under the heading 'storage'), you should find information about the hard drive. See what capacity the drive is reported as being & let me know.

I know you said the laptop was an Armada 1750, but do you know the full model number? This may be written on the underside of the laptop & will look something like this : 6333/T/4000/D/0/1 for example.

Do you also know the model number of the drive? This will be written on the actual drive itself & should something like : DK23CA-30

[Canuck]

Samm

PC model is: 6300/T/4000/D/M/1

Drive is: /Hitachi Mdl 1C25n030ATMR04-0 p/n 13G1815 30GB
s/n MRG2H0 KBD5P14R (this is off the drive)

System reports: drive mdl and s/n as per actual drive, but only recognizez 8GB. (going through Explorer, it only see 3.97 GB

Thanks

Jim

[Samm]

OK, can you tell me please :

What size was the old hard drive? (I'm betting it was 8GB max, probably 4GB, right?)

When you installed the new drive, did you run the Compaq quick restore CD that would have been supplied with the laptop? If not, then how did you go about partitioning & formatting the drive?

[Canuck]

Old HD was 4.3 GB.

Partitioning was done by tech (?) that installed drive. Looks like it was partitioned with partition 1 set at 7 mBytes and partition 2, C as Active with 4083 mBytes, fat32.

Diagnostics show the model and s/n of HD correctly but think it is a 8GB drive. Label on drive shows 30GB.

Formatting done as per items 5 and 6 in my original inquiry. "format c" then set up folders "c:\windows\options\cabs" then typed "xcopy32 d:\win98\*.* /s" changed back to "D drive" with Win 98 CD in drive and typed "setup.exe". Seemed to work OK. During the "xcopy" the following files were not found:
Base4.CAB (machine paused here, hit Enter and it proceeded)
Base5.CAB
Base6.CAB

Don't have the Quick restore CD. A copy of Win 98 and another with drivers on it. PC was bought used from work, glad to get those at the time.

Jim

[Tyger]

If samm doesn't mind me sneaking in here, have you checked in Setup to make sure that the BIOS for the drive is set to LBA (logical block address) mode. That is what is needed for older machines to see larger drives.

[Samm]

Tyger is right, it could be that the drive is not using LBA mode, especially given that this is a Compaq - I have come across older Compaq systems before which didn't use LBA mode by default.

Have a look in the bios at the drive parameters. The translation setting will currently be set to one of the following : CHS (normal), Large or LBA. See if LBA is offered as an option but DO NOT CHANGE THIS SETTING YET. Doing so will render the drive inaccessible.

The other possibility, is that the bios has a limitation of 8GB as the max capacity it will recognise. If so, you can do one of the following :

1. See if there is a bios update (or rompaq) available from HP/Compaq which will allow the bios to recognise drives larger than 8GB

2. Use overlay software which will allow the full drive capacity to be used (this can be a bit flakey though!).

3. Repartition the drive to 8GB.

All 3 options will require the drive to be wiped & Windows to be reinstalled from scratch so you will need to back up any data you wish to keep first.