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DFI K6BV3+/66 & hard drive capacity

C

Chromedome45

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Hi all, Ok got this weird problem. I have a 2GB HD in my Pentium 166 system here and I have run the auto detect of the hard drive. And it detects the full capacity of 2112MB. However DOS 5.0 only sees it as a 528MB. I tried to hook up a 2GB CF card and same result. What gives? Any ideas.
Maybe try DOS 6.22? :confused:
 
It seems like *this* problem gets discussed on a nearly weekly basis. There is very detailed information already available so I'm going to be brief.

The 528MB problem is a BIOS limitation. That's all your BIOS can handle. You need either a BIOS update, a DDO or a smaller drive. There are no other solutions.
 
There is very detailed information already available so I'm going to be brief.
Click to expand...

And you're also going to be wrong. It's a Super 7 board, several years newer than any 528MB limits... I believe that board will even accept up to 128GB drives with the latest BIOS.
 
Then why does it fail to recognize over 528MB on more than one drive? This is the classic symptom of the 1024 cylinder limitation.
 
When I have LBA enabled is when it drops to 528. If I have it set to CHS it is reported as 2112 but FDISK only sees 528! Odd BIOS is dated 2000.
 
Chromedome45 said:
When I have LBA enabled is when it drops to 528. If I have it set to CHS it is reported as 2112 but FDISK only sees 528! Odd BIOS is dated 2000.
Click to expand...
You would think that a BIOS dated 2000 would be a translating BIOS. So the question is, is this a translating or non-translating BIOS?
 
Went ahead and tried a 1GB drive and fdisk found the total capacity of the drive same with 6GB drive. Most be an issue with that Seagate 2112. But why the CF Card?
only seen as 528? Kinda strange.
 
Maybe it's like Chuck said and there's a DDO lurking on them. They don't necessarily show any files as they hide in the boot sector. If you put the drive in question into a machine without a translating BIOS you may be able to coax it out (DDO) if it's in there.
 
I vaguely remember having a weird issue like this a long, long time ago. I think you need to completely blow out the MBR (using the dd linux command or something similar) on the drive, power down the computer, then power it back up and try running fdisk again.
 
Some hard drives had "limit capacity" jumpers (or firmware cap limits) to limit them to 1024cyl for older PCs. But that wouldn't explain the CF card, but I have seen quite a few CF cards that don't play well in "IDE mode", might have two problems here, that just have similar symptoms.

Has this drive and CF card been tested in another system? How do they act in a "modern" PC? Arrow_runner may be on to something too I have seen FAT tables so hosed that no DOS utilities could manipulate them or make them right.

What is the make/model of CF card, I have run into LOTS of generic cards that don't do IDE mode well, but even some name brand ones, like Toshiba don't do it well. Best to drop the money on a Sandisk in my opinion, they have never let me down in IDE mode ;-)
 
But that wouldn't explain the CF card, but I have seen quite a few CF cards that don't play well in "IDE mode", might have two problems here, that just have similar symptoms.
Click to expand...

That's kinda what I'm thinking too. CF cards make great hard drives for DOS machines if you can get one that will behave itself, but unfortunately that's a really big "if". A lot of them have various problems out-of-the-box... some won't work at all, some will look like they work but cause all sorts of strange issues when you actually go to use them, and some of 'em you have to jump through all sorts of hoops with arcane utilities to properly enable IDE mode.
 
The CF card is a Centon. Got it at TigerDirect a couple of years ago. I used it with the XT-IDE board in one my Tandy 1000's I had and it worked great. I have also used it with Win95 in the past and had full capacity. Well right now I'm running the 6GB in it so i'll try something again with it later. And that was on my other Pentium system.

Also I forgot what is DDO? excuse stupidity.
 
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