Okay, here's my take on the situation, and I hope I can give you the information with a certain amount of clarity ... although it may not necessarily end up in a straight-forward sequence because of the way things are tied in together, so please bear with me.
First, I advise you to turn on S.M.A.R.T monitoring in the BIOS, just in case there is something wrong with the drive. I also would advise you to attempt to re-detect the drive in the BIOS. This ties in with the information to follow:
Two, it's probable that your BIOS is not going to correctly identify the size of the drive (despite the recent flash). This may because of an inherent BIOS limitation, or the fact that the two drives are on the same cable (which can sometimes occur with WD drives, although this is more likely to happen if the drives are from different manufacturer's, and there is a fairly large difference in the age of the drives) or because the IDE cable is damaged in some way.
In this case, the best thing to do is either try to partition and format the drive while temporarily alone on the primary IDE cable, and see if this makes a difference, or move it to the secondary cable, and again attempt to re-partition and format.
This is assuming that the drive positioning, jumpering, and being the lone device on the cable causes the BIOS to correctly identify the size of the drive ... and it is possible. WD drives can be finicky in this area.
However:
Three ... all of this is mute if EZ-BIOS is still detected on the drive. This is because the utility is not <i>just</i> for installing a drive; it is disk overlay software, which prempts the control and identification of the drive by the BIOS after the initial POST.
The basic effects of using this software means that trying to create a partition with FDISK won't work. Even if the partition <i>can</i> be removed and freshly created in DOS, it cannot be given a drive letter in Windows as long as EZ-BIOS is on the drive. Trying to create a partition by starting the system with the boot disk will only give an error, and using it <i>after</i> EZ-BIOS loads won't change anything ... Windows still won't assign a drive letter to the partition. And, of course, partitioning software like Partition Magic also won't work once in Windows, because there is a basic conflict between the two programs once EZ-BIOS writes the partition table. Again, you'll just get an error.
So where does that leave you?
First, you should use the Data Lifeguard Tools to test the drive (or the <A HREF="http://support.wdc.com/dlg/onlinedlg.asp" target="_new">online diagnostics</A>), and low level format if necessary, which will write zero's and one's on the drive, and remove any data, including the partitions and Master Boot Record. That will give you a clean start. If you run into any errors, you'll know the drive is the problem, and not the mainboard. You should also do this with a ATA-100/133 cable that you know for a fact is in good shape.
Afterwards, you can try again to create a partition on the drive with EZ-BIOS. Since you mentioned trying this before, and ending up with a 2GB partition, that sounds like the file system created might possibly have been FAT16, which has a 2GB partition size limitation. You have to be very careful about what file system EZ-BIOS chooses, and it must either be FAT32 or NTFS (with NTFS probably being the best choice in this case, since the problem is that the partition is locked in at 32GB, not just that the drive is completely undetected.)
Or ...
You can remove EZ-BIOS, (which will allow FDISK to function again), use FDISK to delete all partitions on the drive, and then try to use Disk Management in Windows to partition and format the drive as NTFS, even if you need to create more than one partition to claim all the free space (assuming that the BIOS identification issue is corrected by moving the drive position and changing the jumper settings) ...
Or ...
You can go ahead and get a <A HREF="http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_sid=R_QRoEEg&p_lva=&p_faqid=95&p_created=1006898100&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9ncmlkc29ydD0mcF9yb3dfY250PTMzJnBfc2VhcmNoX3RleHQ9Y29udHJvbGxlciBjYXJkJnBfc2VhcmNoX3R5cGU9NCZwX3Byb2RfbHZsMT05JnBfcHJvZF9sdmwyPTI1JnBfY2F0X2x2bDE9fmFueX4mcF9zb3J0X2J5PWRmbHQmcF9wYWdlPTE*&p_li=" target="_new">controller card</A>, plug the drive into that, and settle everything once and for all. The card will override the BIOS detection, and allow you to partition the drive and format with the file system of your choice, as you see fit.
This, I think, is the best option, as once the drive's file system is NTFS, if you want to change it back to FAT32, you either need to low level format the drive with the DLG Tools, or remove EZ-BIOS and do the conversion with Partition Magic or a similar program.
That's my two cents.
I hope you find some of this to be useful.
Comments from other user's ... Woodman, PooBaa, khha4113, Teq?
Toey
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