Do 40gigs work in a 440LX?

[owais]

I got a friend who just bought a 40GB 7200 RPM HD. I installed it for him in his 440LX system. The bios no matter what sees the HD. I tried every jumper settings possible it does not work. The HD came with the EZ-bios crap so i tried it. It sees the HD and I was able to partion the HD as I wanted. During the setup, it said that EZ-Bios was installed. I reboot the system, and bam, there is nothing there. With EZ-Bios is usually says "Loading EZ-Bios" or some crap but nothing, it doesn't boot. So I put in the 98 startup disk and it still doesn't work since I don't fdisk doesn't see the HD. Does anyone know the problem? I am goin to try this HD in a different system to see if the HD is bad but can not do it yet. If anyone knows anything about this, please let me know.
Thanks.

 

[lhgpoobaa]

yes and no.
a few months back i had the same prob

before i got my new supacomputer/beast, i got an IBM 40gig 60GXP (i was slowly upgrading in parts)
problem was i too had a LX (gigabyte GA-686BLX)
apparently if you are running an AWARD bios (think the revision is 4.5) the bios locks up when detecting any drive over 33.8Gig. Kinda like the old 512MB/2gig/8gig barriers.
There is a way around it.
Go to your hard drive manufacturers webpage and have a look around for "33.8G barrier" or "Dynamic Drive Overlay" program.
my IBM dynamic drive overlay basically pulls the wool over the Bios Eyes, and the drive is accepted as 33.8, but after booting fixes everything back to the normal 40gig.

hope this helps
! smart hamster
the dynamic drive overlay sits in the boot sector i think and you see it every time u boot.
might require some fiddling to work though.


My Hamster doesnt like sarcasm. He may very well bite you in your hard to reach places!

 

[owais]

Yeah, you are exactly correct, the bios locks up. Im gonna give what you said a try. Thank you very much.

 

[lhgpoobaa]

*nods* i knew it from as soon as u started. exactly the same symptoms.
back in the bood old days that award 4.5 or 4.51 bios was pretty common... and back in those days, who would have thought 40gig drives were possible.
when i got mine i got a 2.1 seagate. or i could have waited a week to get the new 2.5gig! lol

best of luck. im glad i could save u time. i wasted a weekend fixing that, and still had problems booting off the big drive.

P.S. are you going to use an ATA100 controller? or just run it off the 33/66?
otherwise your burst speed and possibly max transfer rate will be kinda hamstrung.

Regards
Mr Hamster

My Hamster doesnt like sarcasm. He may very well bite you in your hard to reach places!

 

[rcf84]

doesn't work get a ATA100 card for $20

Nice Intel and AMD users get a Cookie.... Yummy