New System, KG7-Raid MB--Cant access Harddrive

[Nightowl]

I'm building a new system:

KG7-Raid Mother Board, BIOS revision -4J
1.4 Athlon CPU, FSB 266
256MB Crucial PC2100 RAM Cas 2.5 X two sticks
IBM 40 GB Hard Drive
Asus V8200 G-force 3 Video Card

I can not access the hard drive to install software.

The system boots fine, goes through the post, I can access the BIOS Softmenu Program, system is stable to this point, Softmenu detects the hard drive fine, CPU idle temp is around 43 C, no fancy settings, not trying to OC yet, not trying to use RAID yet.

Put floppy system disk in drive and boot to A:\ prompt, tried to run Microsoft's fdisk but it did not want to recognize the large hard drive. Had seen elsewhere that this might happen, so switched to FreeDOS's fdisk and it correctly detected the hard drive and partitioned fine, and set the C partition as active. Rebooted.

Now, the problem--at the A:\> prompt, typed "format c: /s"

Response was "Invalid drive specification"

Put a floppy Rescue Disk for Partition Magic (v4), a DOS-based program, in the drive, rebooted, the program booted fine, I was able to partition and format the drive using this program, rebooted.

At the A:\> prompt, typed "c:"

Response was "Invalid drive specification" again!

Have tried connecting with different cable, have moved the drive to different IDE channel--there are 4 on the KG7-Raid--and the BIOS detected the drive in each new position, but same "Invalid drive specification" response when trying to access the C-drive.

I have typed "format a: /s" and the the Microsoft format program formated the floppy just fine.

What am I missing here? Some programs "see" the harddrive and access it, but it's not available at the prompt! If someone knows about this problem, I would sure appreciate you pointing me in the right direction to proceed.

Thank you.

 

[khha4113]

Did you FDisk, then FORMAT it? My KG7-RAID has no problem recognize IBM 60GXP 40G HD.

At the A:\> prompt, typed "c:"

Response was "Invalid drive specification" again!

Of course, you need to FDisk your HD for OS to recognize it.

Good or Bad have no meaning at all, depends on what your point of view is.

 

[Nightowl]

Yes, Partition Magic partitioned (fdisk'd) the harddrive first and then formated it. But I'm not at the stage where I can tell if the OS sees the harddrive. I need DOS to see the harddrive in order to install the OS for the first time.

Thanks for the response.

 

[Guest]

If you are posting Ok, and the drive is detected, then your disk for Partition Magic recognized the hd ok, I am guessing the floppy you are booting to when you try to continue is hozored!

If you have access to a windows 98 SE startup disk you might have better luck.

It sounds like your hardware is OK

OOPS! Rest of the Story

If you can boot to the windows 98 SE startup diskette ok, tell it to start the computer with CDROM support and then install your OS

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Insidious on 10/05/01 10:12 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Guest]

Go here for help

http://www.viahardware.com/faq/kg7kr7/kg7kr7faq.htm