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Harddrive recognition
- Thread starter zebdooley
- Start date
Chuck(G)
25k Member
Details would be useful. Drive type? Geometry? Platform used to clone?
The extra drive is an 20gb IDE The copy program was HD Copy , Windows Millennium is the operating system
The motherboard is an American Megatrends with a 400mhz Celeron. When I click on My Computer no extra
drive is shown, but it shows up in the Bios
The motherboard is an American Megatrends with a 400mhz Celeron. When I click on My Computer no extra
drive is shown, but it shows up in the Bios
Chuck(G)
25k Member
Have you tried a Clonezilla live CD? That's part of my toolkit.
Stone
10k Member
Are you sure that board (BIOS) supports Int13h extensions? If you're not sure you can try a drive of 8GB or less and if it's fully recognized then it's likely your BIOS is too old for any drive over 8GB.
Chuck(G)
25k Member
My point about using Clonezilla--it doesn't care what the BIOS says.
Stone
10k Member
The CMOS sees it as 20GB. You are making an assumption here. Just because the CMOS or BIOS can recognize the full size of a drive does not mean that it can correctly do the necessary translation to support it. Try configuring this 20GB drive with 1024 256 63 C/H/S. If it (ME) can see it as an 8GB drive then your BIOS is too old to support the full drive.
Agent Orange
Veteran Member
Remove your original HD completely from your system and substitute your new 20 GB HD in its place. Ensure that you have selected MASTER or CS. POST your system and check the BIOS info then proceed to full boot with a system floppy. Assuming your new HD is formatted, attempt to copy a batch or text file and see what happens. If you can open and read the batch or text file you have eliminated the drive as a source of the problem. If your BIOS sees both drives and ME doesn't you have a problem with ME. IIRC, this was a semi-common problem back in the day. I would go to the control panel and click on "Install new hardware" and/or look at Device Manager and click on the new hardware search tab.
SpidersWeb
Veteran Member
Also if that 20Gb drive was formatted/partitioned as NTFS or similar - I don't think Windows Me will put it in My Computer and I'm not sure if Add New Hardware does anything for hard drives?
I'd expect you'd likely need to partition/format it. If you're trying to duplicate the boot drive, I'd also recommend a proper clone tool - like Norton Ghost or similar, rather than just copying files in Me.
I don't know much about Me, I avoided it.
I'd expect you'd likely need to partition/format it. If you're trying to duplicate the boot drive, I'd also recommend a proper clone tool - like Norton Ghost or similar, rather than just copying files in Me.
I don't know much about Me, I avoided it.
Stone
10k Member
I ran ME for five or six years as my main system so I'm fairly familiar with it. I still run ME in my tweener, along with DOS 1.x, 2.x, 3.x, 5.x, 6.x, 7.x, 98SE, XP Home and XP Pro.
Chuck(G)
25k Member
What does FDISK say about the drive?
If you don't have the patch to ME that allows you to drop to a real-mode DOS prompt, it might be prudent to install it.
If you don't have the patch to ME that allows you to drop to a real-mode DOS prompt, it might be prudent to install it.
Stone
10k Member
It'll need to be FDISK 7.x or better or it won't say anything other than Non-DOS. 
Last edited:
Chuck(G)
25k Member
It'll need to be FDISK 7.x or better or it won't say anything other than Non-DOS.
It'll at least show that there's something there.
Stone
10k Member
I still run ME on a 10GB drive (that it came with). :smile:
FWIW, what system floppy can you boot from that will recognize a 20GB drive?
FWIW, what system floppy can you boot from that will recognize a 20GB drive?
Chuck(G)
25k Member
I don't see the problem. I run Win98SE, WinXP and NetBSD (multiboot) off of a 40GB IDE drive on a K6-2 equipped system. Windows gets two partitions.
Agent Orange
Veteran Member
You don't actually need the floppy, its for continuity after to check the BIOS setting. Don't be so nit-picky.
Stone
10k Member
Make up your mind; you can't have it both ways.
Remove your original HD completely from your system and substitute your new 20 GB HD in its place. Ensure that you have selected MASTER or CS. POST your system and check the BIOS info then proceed to full boot with a system floppy.
MasawVx
Member
granting BIOS detects the drive, the question is after the POST or during DOS session if the drive still exits then assume there is no hardware problem with the HD. you can check if the its accessible when you use FDISK to partition it or just check for partition information. if there is a partition existing it should not be an NTFS partition for the drive to show up in WinME. if it doesnt show up using fdisk then probably it has a problem with the BIOS parameters or something..