HDD issues

I am in serious need of help or advice.
Major problems started before Christmas when I simultaneously tried a MOBO
swap, all other parts same, except attempting to add a SG-160 PATA and
SG-160 SATA simultaneously.

First lesson learned is not to attempt so many changes at one time.

SATA drive not recognized on first port in BIOS, but was on second. Perhaps
a bad MOBO? Well that was the thought and I continued.

PATA drive was set on secondary master with a CDRW.

To get MOBO functioning properly, I blew away everything in device manager
and attempted reinstall. Numerous problems, mostly system stops during the
hardware detection phase. (multiple attempts at reinstalling OS)

Finally got up and seemed OK, for a short while. Except I then found that
all drives were running in MSDOS compatibility mode after the first complete
reinstall of OS. (No wonder it seemed like the slowest machine I have ever
seen)
No updates at that point so no system restore, or maybe it was the added
drives. But unable to get it working normally and finally discovering that
it had something to do with CDRW and SG-160 on same channel, Could not see
CDRW in Explorer or device manager with both hooked up. (Everything was
manually jumpered at this point, because the original MOBO manual said to do
it that way and didn't even mention cable select)

Not knowing what level of corruption or type of problem or how to even undo
any of this mess, I blew away the drives. Data backed up, I proceded with
format and clean install. Hardware detection went a little better. Gave up
on hooking up the SATA drive at that time as couldn't get into windows with
it hooked up even though it looked fine in BIOS on second channel.
Somewhere in setting up the new PATA, to the best of my recollection, on
boot I got a screen saying one of the drives was operating in MSDOS
compatibility. System halted to avoid corruption ___something, etc. All
drives would be set to MSDOS mode. etc.

No restore points. I eventually did get that MOBO up and operating without
the added drives. But the MOBO didn't seem to be all that hot and since I'd
rather have the added drives, I switched back to the previous MOBO. And of
course install to get it working.

Not part of the problem, but part of the tale. After installing some
utilities and all updates from MS and a few other things to satisfy myself
that I had something stable, I turned the machine over to daughter who said
she had a report to work on. I was tired and unsuspecting. Experience had
taught me to avoid online land mines, but she apparently went straight to
myspace and caught something. Within seconds the whole system sank to a
crawl. Restores had no effect. Could not get on line at all. Each successive
boot was worse until I could not even get task bar.
Lesson number two!!! Don't let someone else touch machine until security
suite is loaded. Splat! like mushy cow flop hitting concrete. A few days of
careful work down the drain. This time, once I reached that point of
installing, I made a copy to a second HDD and unhooked it. And I'm at the
point I want to do the same with all the stuff that has been added, so I
have a point of quick install and only need to add data plus changes.
BUT!!!!!!!!!

Now running the SG-160 PATA on primary master and CDRW on secondary master.
BTW, found other MOBO was cable select compatible, so is this one, and that
is the config I'm using.

I have found out that the SATA drive behaves the same way on this MOBO, no
show channel one, looks good in BIOS on channel two, problems beyond that,
so have set it aside again, but at least it isn't the MOBO, I'm guessing.

Tried to install a second SG-160 and set it up as a copy of the first.
Seagates disk wizard (ontrack tools). First I noticed that manually setting
partition sizes with slider, I could not get the same size partitions.
Something wrong with their tool I suspect. Also noted that doing it as a
copy of primary master it kept telling me second partition was 16K clusters.
BS. Originally set up with 32K and size of 33,585MB, a point on the slider.
Also went back into windows and moved a 1KB file to that partition and
checked properties of it which showed it 32KB space used. Obviously a fault
in SG disk wizard.
It copied the C partition as expected, but not the other two, which only had
data on dsk1 partition3, but I wanted it on my back up drive as well. Why
not? Wouldn't hurt to have another backup of it on a drive that would soon
be unplugged?

Is there something wrong with that thinking?

BTW, copying takes a lot of time, especially the tool copying the C
partition from one drive to the other.
Having gotten all copied to the new drive, I was looking to find an
explanation as to why the slider would not stop on the same increments of
partition size and see if I had missed anything I wanted backed up on that
HDD. Guessing, it was 4-6 reboots when that darned blue screen of MSDOS
compatibility mode stuff reared its ugly head again. Booted into windows,
restore points are gone.
Ugly point one?

Unplugging that added drive, into safe, did scanreg /restore. So the setting
that bars normal operation is somewhere in the registry. I would like to
know what it is, if known. On one occaison I had no good registry restore
points which led to another reinstall.
Ugly point two, what in the registry is it?

Determined to get me a good copy on a second HDD, I have pressed forward.
And somehow, disk wizard I think, I started getting message about
unsupported configuration. I have no idea why it had not popped up before.
It gives option to ignore. It is not liking that second HDD is slave to CDRW
master on secondary. Figure best not to ignore with the trouble I have.

2nd HDD is now slave on primary channel. And again I've had issues with blue
screen, MSDOS compatibility thing. I just laid aside concerns that something
may be done to MBR to original drive with choice of copy and make new drive
boot drive, either leaving old drive in or removing. He told me the change
is strictly by cable or position designation. Is there something wrong with
having a complete usuable partition as primary partition on two drives
simultaneously hooked up?
Ugly point three, above?

For what reasons may I be getting that blue screen message? Is there a good
list related to such issues?
Ugly point four?

End of quarter and hoping the wind will be more favorable.
Norman

As you already know you shouldn't have tried adding the new drives at the
same time as swapping out the mobo but I would probably have done the same
g. Some points to ponder.
a) Have you installed the new motherboards chipset drivers?
b) Are those drivers Win Me compatible (maybe not if it has sata
controllers)
c) You do realise that Win Me cannot access drives larger than 128GB, or
at least beyond 128GB without both motherboard and operating system
support for large drives. Win Me does not. Your mobo bios should
hopefully support 48bit LBA addressing provided it is no more than say
three years old.
d) I don't know of any SATA drivers for use with Win Me but this doesn't
mean they don't exist and it looks as if you might have one.

Whilst you have given what seems like a very full description of all that
you have done I feel it might be helpful if you were now to concentrate on
one problem at a time rather than post such a long post.
--
Mike Maltby



Norman wrote:

I am in serious need of help or advice.
Major problems started before Christmas when I simultaneously tried a
MOBO swap, all other parts same, except attempting to add a SG-160
PATA and SG-160 SATA simultaneously.

First lesson learned is not to attempt so many changes at one time.

SATA drive not recognized on first port in BIOS, but was on second.
Perhaps a bad MOBO? Well that was the thought and I continued.

PATA drive was set on secondary master with a CDRW.

To get MOBO functioning properly, I blew away everything in device
manager and attempted reinstall. Numerous problems, mostly system
stops during the hardware detection phase. (multiple attempts at
reinstalling OS)

Finally got up and seemed OK, for a short while. Except I then found
that all drives were running in MSDOS compatibility mode after the
first complete reinstall of OS. (No wonder it seemed like the slowest
machine I have ever seen)
No updates at that point so no system restore, or maybe it was the
added drives. But unable to get it working normally and finally
discovering that it had something to do with CDRW and SG-160 on same
channel, Could not see CDRW in Explorer or device manager with both
hooked up. (Everything was manually jumpered at this point, because
the original MOBO manual said to do it that way and didn't even
mention cable select)

Not knowing what level of corruption or type of problem or how to
even undo any of this mess, I blew away the drives. Data backed up, I
proceded with format and clean install. Hardware detection went a
little better. Gave up on hooking up the SATA drive at that time as
couldn't get into windows with it hooked up even though it looked
fine in BIOS on second channel. Somewhere in setting up the new PATA,
to the best of my recollection, on boot I got a screen saying one of
the drives was operating in MSDOS compatibility. System halted to
avoid corruption ___something, etc. All drives would be set to MSDOS
mode. etc.

No restore points. I eventually did get that MOBO up and operating
without the added drives. But the MOBO didn't seem to be all that hot
and since I'd rather have the added drives, I switched back to the
previous MOBO. And of course install to get it working.

Not part of the problem, but part of the tale. After installing some
utilities and all updates from MS and a few other things to satisfy
myself that I had something stable, I turned the machine over to
daughter who said she had a report to work on. I was tired and
unsuspecting. Experience had taught me to avoid online land mines,
but she apparently went straight to myspace and caught something.
Within seconds the whole system sank to a crawl. Restores had no
effect. Could not get on line at all. Each successive boot was worse
until I could not even get task bar.
Lesson number two!!! Don't let someone else touch machine until
security suite is loaded. Splat! like mushy cow flop hitting
concrete. A few days of careful work down the drain. This time, once
I reached that point of installing, I made a copy to a second HDD and
unhooked it. And I'm at the point I want to do the same with all the
stuff that has been added, so I have a point of quick install and
only need to add data plus changes. BUT!!!!!!!!!

Now running the SG-160 PATA on primary master and CDRW on secondary
master. BTW, found other MOBO was cable select compatible, so is this
one, and that is the config I'm using.

I have found out that the SATA drive behaves the same way on this
MOBO, no show channel one, looks good in BIOS on channel two,
problems beyond that, so have set it aside again, but at least it
isn't the MOBO, I'm guessing.

Tried to install a second SG-160 and set it up as a copy of the first.
Seagates disk wizard (ontrack tools). First I noticed that manually
setting partition sizes with slider, I could not get the same size
partitions. Something wrong with their tool I suspect. Also noted
that doing it as a copy of primary master it kept telling me second
partition was 16K clusters. BS. Originally set up with 32K and size
of 33,585MB, a point on the slider. Also went back into windows and
moved a 1KB file to that partition and checked properties of it which
showed it 32KB space used. Obviously a fault in SG disk wizard.
It copied the C partition as expected, but not the other two, which
only had data on dsk1 partition3, but I wanted it on my back up drive
as well. Why not? Wouldn't hurt to have another backup of it on a
drive that would soon be unplugged?

Is there something wrong with that thinking?

BTW, copying takes a lot of time, especially the tool copying the C
partition from one drive to the other.
Having gotten all copied to the new drive, I was looking to find an
explanation as to why the slider would not stop on the same
increments of partition size and see if I had missed anything I
wanted backed up on that HDD. Guessing, it was 4-6 reboots when that
darned blue screen of MSDOS compatibility mode stuff reared its ugly
head again. Booted into windows, restore points are gone.
Ugly point one?

Unplugging that added drive, into safe, did scanreg /restore. So the
setting that bars normal operation is somewhere in the registry. I
would like to know what it is, if known. On one occaison I had no
good registry restore points which led to another reinstall.
Ugly point two, what in the registry is it?

Determined to get me a good copy on a second HDD, I have pressed
forward. And somehow, disk wizard I think, I started getting message
about unsupported configuration. I have no idea why it had not popped
up before. It gives option to ignore. It is not liking that second
HDD is slave to CDRW master on secondary. Figure best not to ignore
with the trouble I have.

2nd HDD is now slave on primary channel. And again I've had issues
with blue screen, MSDOS compatibility thing. I just laid aside
concerns that something may be done to MBR to original drive with
choice of copy and make new drive boot drive, either leaving old
drive in or removing. He told me the change is strictly by cable or
position designation. Is there something wrong with having a complete
usuable partition as primary partition on two drives simultaneously
hooked up?
Ugly point three, above?

For what reasons may I be getting that blue screen message? Is there
a good list related to such issues?
Ugly point four?

End of quarter and hoping the wind will be more favorable.
Norman

"Mike M" wrote in message
...
As you already know you shouldn't have tried adding the new drives at the
same time as swapping out the mobo but I would probably have done the same
g. Some points to ponder.
Grinning with you on that.

a) Have you installed the new motherboards chipset drivers?
Yes.


b) Are those drivers Win Me compatible (maybe not if it has sata
controllers)
Yes, but not really certain on SATA level of things. NForce2 chipset. SATA
on in BIOS which is preferred default for OS install and for any unused
devices I've seen recommendations that they are turned off in device
manager, not BIOS. Turning SATA on in BIOS installs a second "Standard Dual
PCI IDE Controller" with primary and secondary controller. This is in
parallel to the set for the normal IDE hardware (PATA drives, CD, etc.).
Each have their own IRQ assigned. So, for WME at least, drivers appear to be
rather standard. Chipset drivers that do install for MOBO are Ethernet,
GART, MemCtl, and SMBus.


c) You do realise that Win Me cannot access drives larger than 128GB, or
at least beyond 128GB without both motherboard and operating system
support for large drives. Win Me does not. Your mobo bios should
hopefully support 48bit LBA addressing provided it is no more than say
three years old.
Or ~137GB decimal. I've limited the drives to that boundary for now. No
literature saying it does 48bit LBA, but strongly suspect it does. I have
not heard any complaints from those running XP on this MOBO, related to this
issue.


d) I don't know of any SATA drivers for use with Win Me but this doesn't
mean they don't exist and it looks as if you might have one.
The board has RAID drivers available for XP use. No RAID in WME. The only
other restriction that pops to mind is possibly not being able to boot WME
from SATA drive. But then the Seagate tech thought I could, with WME. Hmmn?


Whilst you have given what seems like a very full description of all that
you have done I feel it might be helpful if you were now to concentrate on
one problem at a time rather than post such a long post.
You are absolutely right on how to procede. And that is my intent. Going to
attempt adding the 2nd HDD again making it a copy of first. Then disconnect
it and use as life saver.
But wanted some confidence and maybe missed ideas from someone such as
yourself. Also Seagate tech was deferring MSDOS issues. You know, blame it
on the other guy. But should we find the issue, I think I shall not pass it
back to him. I can't be the only one with such and if they want to sell
Seagate drives they should at least be able to handle such issues to get
past an install.

BTW, found my boot. Stuck in my bum from first issue (grin issue above)

Thanks. I'll post back as it procedes.
Norman

--
Mike Maltby



Norman wrote:

I am in serious need of help or advice.
Major problems started before Christmas when I simultaneously tried a
MOBO swap, all other parts same, except attempting to add a SG-160
PATA and SG-160 SATA simultaneously.

First lesson learned is not to attempt so many changes at one time.

SATA drive not recognized on first port in BIOS, but was on second.
Perhaps a bad MOBO? Well that was the thought and I continued.

PATA drive was set on secondary master with a CDRW.

To get MOBO functioning properly, I blew away everything in device
manager and attempted reinstall. Numerous problems, mostly system
stops during the hardware detection phase. (multiple attempts at
reinstalling OS)

Finally got up and seemed OK, for a short while. Except I then found
that all drives were running in MSDOS compatibility mode after the
first complete reinstall of OS. (No wonder it seemed like the slowest
machine I have ever seen)
No updates at that point so no system restore, or maybe it was the
added drives. But unable to get it working normally and finally
discovering that it had something to do with CDRW and SG-160 on same
channel, Could not see CDRW in Explorer or device manager with both
hooked up. (Everything was manually jumpered at this point, because
the original MOBO manual said to do it that way and didn't even
mention cable select)

Not knowing what level of corruption or type of problem or how to
even undo any of this mess, I blew away the drives. Data backed up, I
proceded with format and clean install. Hardware detection went a
little better. Gave up on hooking up the SATA drive at that time as
couldn't get into windows with it hooked up even though it looked
fine in BIOS on second channel. Somewhere in setting up the new PATA,
to the best of my recollection, on boot I got a screen saying one of
the drives was operating in MSDOS compatibility. System halted to
avoid corruption ___something, etc. All drives would be set to MSDOS
mode. etc.

No restore points. I eventually did get that MOBO up and operating
without the added drives. But the MOBO didn't seem to be all that hot
and since I'd rather have the added drives, I switched back to the
previous MOBO. And of course install to get it working.

Not part of the problem, but part of the tale. After installing some
utilities and all updates from MS and a few other things to satisfy
myself that I had something stable, I turned the machine over to
daughter who said she had a report to work on. I was tired and
unsuspecting. Experience had taught me to avoid online land mines,
but she apparently went straight to myspace and caught something.
Within seconds the whole system sank to a crawl. Restores had no
effect. Could not get on line at all. Each successive boot was worse
until I could not even get task bar.
Lesson number two!!! Don't let someone else touch machine until
security suite is loaded. Splat! like mushy cow flop hitting
concrete. A few days of careful work down the drain. This time, once
I reached that point of installing, I made a copy to a second HDD and
unhooked it. And I'm at the point I want to do the same with all the
stuff that has been added, so I have a point of quick install and
only need to add data plus changes. BUT!!!!!!!!!

Now running the SG-160 PATA on primary master and CDRW on secondary
master. BTW, found other MOBO was cable select compatible, so is this
one, and that is the config I'm using.

I have found out that the SATA drive behaves the same way on this
MOBO, no show channel one, looks good in BIOS on channel two,
problems beyond that, so have set it aside again, but at least it
isn't the MOBO, I'm guessing.

Tried to install a second SG-160 and set it up as a copy of the first.
Seagates disk wizard (ontrack tools). First I noticed that manually
setting partition sizes with slider, I could not get the same size
partitions. Something wrong with their tool I suspect. Also noted
that doing it as a copy of primary master it kept telling me second
partition was 16K clusters. BS. Originally set up with 32K and size
of 33,585MB, a point on the slider. Also went back into windows and
moved a 1KB file to that partition and checked properties of it which
showed it 32KB space used. Obviously a fault in SG disk wizard.
It copied the C partition as expected, but not the other two, which
only had data on dsk1 partition3, but I wanted it on my back up drive
as well. Why not? Wouldn't hurt to have another backup of it on a
drive that would soon be unplugged?

Is there something wrong with that thinking?

BTW, copying takes a lot of time, especially the tool copying the C
partition from one drive to the other.
Having gotten all copied to the new drive, I was looking to find an
explanation as to why the slider would not stop on the same
increments of partition size and see if I had missed anything I
wanted backed up on that HDD. Guessing, it was 4-6 reboots when that
darned blue screen of MSDOS compatibility mode stuff reared its ugly
head again. Booted into windows, restore points are gone.
Ugly point one?

Unplugging that added drive, into safe, did scanreg /restore. So the
setting that bars normal operation is somewhere in the registry. I
would like to know what it is, if known. On one occaison I had no
good registry restore points which led to another reinstall.
Ugly point two, what in the registry is it?

Determined to get me a good copy on a second HDD, I have pressed
forward. And somehow, disk wizard I think, I started getting message
about unsupported configuration. I have no idea why it had not popped
up before. It gives option to ignore. It is not liking that second
HDD is slave to CDRW master on secondary. Figure best not to ignore
with the trouble I have.

2nd HDD is now slave on primary channel. And again I've had issues
with blue screen, MSDOS compatibility thing. I just laid aside
concerns that something may be done to MBR to original drive with
choice of copy and make new drive boot drive, either leaving old
drive in or removing. He told me the change is strictly by cable or
position designation. Is there something wrong with having a complete
usuable partition as primary partition on two drives simultaneously
hooked up?
Ugly point three, above?

For what reasons may I be getting that blue screen message? Is there
a good list related to such issues?
Ugly point four?

End of quarter and hoping the wind will be more favorable.
Norman

I see that nForce2 drivers are available for Win Me. This appears to be
the last nForce chipset for which Win9x drivers are available. I have two
boxes with nForce chipsets, one has an nForce3 250 and the other an
nForce4 ultra and knew that no Win9x drivers were available for either of
these.

SATA on in BIOS which is preferred default for OS install

You should be able to select which disk/controller has the boot HD device
in the bios. On my systems this appears as the option above that where
the boot order is selected (such as 1) Floppy, 2) CD-ROM, 3) Hard disk).

Turning SATA on in BIOS installs a second "Standard Dual PCI IDE
Controller"

That's normal. On my boxes running XP these appear as Parallel ATA
Controller and Serial ATA Controller. It all depends on the text string
in the inf file used when the driver was installed and I seem to think
that before installing the nForce drivers the description was similar to
what you are seeing but perhaps with (Parallel) or (Serial) appended.

Or ~137GB decimal.

Only those selling hard drives use decimal g. Everyone else working
with computers uses the binary GB which is 2**30 or 1,073,741,824 bytes.

No RAID in WME.

You might find a third party add-on RAID card that supports Win Me however
personally I don't think that any Win9x system including Win Me warrants
expenditure on new hardware, or at least not specialist hardware such as
this. All the more so given the limitations of the FAT32 filing system.

MSDOS Compatibility Mode.
Have a look at MS KB 130179 - "Troubleshooting MS-DOS Compatibility Mode
on Hard Disks" (http://support.microsoft.com?kbid=130179) and see if this
helps in resolving your Compatibility Mode problems. It lists a number of
possible causes for such problems together with some suggestions as to
fixes.

Getting out of compatibility mode can sometimes be far from easy. In some
cases it can only be done by reinstalling Win Me.

Best of luck.
--
Mike Maltby



Norman wrote:

As you already know you shouldn't have tried adding the new drives
at the same time as swapping out the mobo but I would probably have
done the same g. Some points to ponder.
Grinning with you on that.

a) Have you installed the new motherboards chipset drivers?
Yes.


b) Are those drivers Win Me compatible (maybe not if it has sata
controllers)
Yes, but not really certain on SATA level of things. NForce2 chipset.
SATA on in BIOS which is preferred default for OS install and for any
unused devices I've seen recommendations that they are turned off in
device manager, not BIOS. Turning SATA on in BIOS installs a second
"Standard Dual PCI IDE Controller" with primary and secondary
controller. This is in parallel to the set for the normal IDE
hardware (PATA drives, CD, etc.). Each have their own IRQ assigned.
So, for WME at least, drivers appear to be rather standard. Chipset
drivers that do install for MOBO are Ethernet, GART, MemCtl, and
SMBus.


c) You do realise that Win Me cannot access drives larger than
128GB, or at least beyond 128GB without both motherboard and
operating system support for large drives. Win Me does not. Your
mobo bios should hopefully support 48bit LBA addressing provided it
is no more than say three years old.
Or ~137GB decimal. I've limited the drives to that boundary for now.
No literature saying it does 48bit LBA, but strongly suspect it does.
I have not heard any complaints from those running XP on this MOBO,
related to this issue.


d) I don't know of any SATA drivers for use with Win Me but this
doesn't mean they don't exist and it looks as if you might have one.
The board has RAID drivers available for XP use. No RAID in WME. The
only other restriction that pops to mind is possibly not being able
to boot WME from SATA drive. But then the Seagate tech thought I
could, with WME. Hmmn?


Whilst you have given what seems like a very full description of all
that you have done I feel it might be helpful if you were now to
concentrate on one problem at a time rather than post such a long
post.
You are absolutely right on how to procede. And that is my intent.
Going to attempt adding the 2nd HDD again making it a copy of first.
Then disconnect it and use as life saver.
But wanted some confidence and maybe missed ideas from someone such as
yourself. Also Seagate tech was deferring MSDOS issues. You know,
blame it on the other guy. But should we find the issue, I think I
shall not pass it back to him. I can't be the only one with such and
if they want to sell Seagate drives they should at least be able to
handle such issues to get past an install.

BTW, found my boot. Stuck in my bum from first issue (grin issue
above)

Thanks. I'll post back as it procedes.
Norman

"Mike M" wrote in message
...
I see that nForce2 drivers are available for Win Me. This appears to be
the last nForce chipset for which Win9x drivers are available. I have two
boxes with nForce chipsets, one has an nForce3 250 and the other an
nForce4 ultra and knew that no Win9x drivers were available for either of
these.

Interesting, I did not know that, that is to move to nForce 3 or 4 basically
needs newer than W9x. Or will it install with OS drivers? Just no updated
ones.

SATA on in BIOS which is preferred default for OS install

You should be able to select which disk/controller has the boot HD device
in the bios. On my systems this appears as the option above that where
the boot order is selected (such as 1) Floppy, 2) CD-ROM, 3) Hard disk).

Seems to be very much the same. Subsequent screens to pick from list for
removable, optical, HDD, etc installed. But, then never got that far with
SATA. Also have screen for booting from network I think.

Turning SATA on in BIOS installs a second "Standard Dual PCI IDE
Controller"

That's normal. On my boxes running XP these appear as Parallel ATA
Controller and Serial ATA Controller. It all depends on the text string
in the inf file used when the driver was installed and I seem to think
that before installing the nForce drivers the description was similar to
what you are seeing but perhaps with (Parallel) or (Serial) appended.

It doesn't differentiate them on this box in any way other than knowing that
if you turn SATA off in BIOS, one set disappears.

Or ~137GB decimal.

Only those selling hard drives use decimal g. Everyone else working
with computers uses the binary GB which is 2**30 or 1,073,741,824 bytes.

Maybe someone should include it in spec requiring such labeling. Slap them,
that is. Always some darned renegade trying to confuse world. Chrysler
finally abandoned its left hand thread on wheel nut for left side of vehicle
a few years back. Show me a bread company that does the same thing with the
twisty-tie and I'll leave the other brands on the shelf. Probably why so
many men throw it away and tuck the end of the wrapper upon opening. And I
might do the same thing with HDD. Leave the others on the shelf.

No RAID in WME.

You might find a third party add-on RAID card that supports Win Me however
personally I don't think that any Win9x system including Win Me warrants
expenditure on new hardware, or at least not specialist hardware such as
this. All the more so given the limitations of the FAT32 filing system.

I was considering venturing into the area of RAID. But am now thinking it
might not be worthwhile. Am now thinking that the move from FAT to NTFS
might have more advantage in the area of reliability, as a first step
anyway. Am I wrong?
Pushing the system to the point of gaining much advantage by striping would
likely show that I'm really in need of CPU and associated upgrade anyway.
(2GB Dual channel RAM, limited to 1G in ini file) So only reason to RAID
would be added reliability of redundancy, which carries its own price. Yet
no guarantee of something happening on the order of catatropic inside the
box. And still an external can get caught up in such an event.


MSDOS Compatibility Mode.
Have a look at MS KB 130179 - "Troubleshooting MS-DOS Compatibility Mode
on Hard Disks" (http://support.microsoft.com?kbid=130179) and see if this
helps in resolving your Compatibility Mode problems. It lists a number of
possible causes for such problems together with some suggestions as to
fixes.

Thanks for the link. It appears a little different than the last one I
followed. I will pursue it carefully hoping to nail the cause.


Getting out of compatibility mode can sometimes be far from easy. In some
cases it can only be done by reinstalling Win Me.

Been there, done that. Not fun. On the lucky occaisons, I immediately shut
down, disconnected extra drives, booted into SAFE mode. One time I was lucky
enough to have restore points. The other times relied on registry restores.
But at least once they didn't exist. As a precaution, when now dabbling in
such a way that maybe such points had not yet been created, or got blown
away and not yet recreated, I get into system information, run scanreg and
tell it to make backup, and run system restore creating yet another point.
This at least eliminates factors outside what I am immediately doing as a
culprit. (suspenders and a belt).

Best of luck.
--
I guess I got lucky. Thanks. Accomplished the complete drive copy to
another, despite the software leaving several assumptions as I proceded, not
even clear that it was to erase new drive versus old. Always canceling when
in doubt, that won't work with this software. Did it with floppy version and
took 16 hours to finish. HDD light best indicator that it was still working.
Once complete I shut down and unhooked drive. The reason brings a question.
If I had allowed it to boot up with both drives, one of them designated as
boot, certainly it would have written over the file placed on root from
system restore. What ill effects might this have brought,if swapping from
one drive to the other, other than possibly not having any restore points
and possibly having to restart system restore for future use?

Off to investigate SATA.
"I'll be back!"
Norman

Mike Maltby



Norman wrote:

As you already know you shouldn't have tried adding the new drives
at the same time as swapping out the mobo but I would probably have
done the same g. Some points to ponder.
Grinning with you on that.

a) Have you installed the new motherboards chipset drivers?
Yes.


b) Are those drivers Win Me compatible (maybe not if it has sata
controllers)
Yes, but not really certain on SATA level of things. NForce2 chipset.
SATA on in BIOS which is preferred default for OS install and for any
unused devices I've seen recommendations that they are turned off in
device manager, not BIOS. Turning SATA on in BIOS installs a second
"Standard Dual PCI IDE Controller" with primary and secondary
controller. This is in parallel to the set for the normal IDE
hardware (PATA drives, CD, etc.). Each have their own IRQ assigned.
So, for WME at least, drivers appear to be rather standard. Chipset
drivers that do install for MOBO are Ethernet, GART, MemCtl, and
SMBus.


c) You do realise that Win Me cannot access drives larger than
128GB, or at least beyond 128GB without both motherboard and
operating system support for large drives. Win Me does not. Your
mobo bios should hopefully support 48bit LBA addressing provided it
is no more than say three years old.
Or ~137GB decimal. I've limited the drives to that boundary for now.
No literature saying it does 48bit LBA, but strongly suspect it does.
I have not heard any complaints from those running XP on this MOBO,
related to this issue.


d) I don't know of any SATA drivers for use with Win Me but this
doesn't mean they don't exist and it looks as if you might have one.
The board has RAID drivers available for XP use. No RAID in WME. The
only other restriction that pops to mind is possibly not being able
to boot WME from SATA drive. But then the Seagate tech thought I
could, with WME. Hmmn?


Whilst you have given what seems like a very full description of all
that you have done I feel it might be helpful if you were now to
concentrate on one problem at a time rather than post such a long
post.
You are absolutely right on how to procede. And that is my intent.
Going to attempt adding the 2nd HDD again making it a copy of first.
Then disconnect it and use as life saver.
But wanted some confidence and maybe missed ideas from someone such as
yourself. Also Seagate tech was deferring MSDOS issues. You know,
blame it on the other guy. But should we find the issue, I think I
shall not pass it back to him. I can't be the only one with such and
if they want to sell Seagate drives they should at least be able to
handle such issues to get past an install.

BTW, found my boot. Stuck in my bum from first issue (grin issue
above)

Thanks. I'll post back as it procedes.
Norman

Got the drive recognized.
Whole issue to that was SG160 SATA300 drive apparently does not do as SG
says, sometimes.
I was told that the interface should automatically handle being attached to
SATA150 controller. Like when hooking for example a DMA 66 drive to DMA 33
or slower controller. Also should be no problem with hooking to faster
controller either.

SG left a back door by the small group of factory use only pins. Jumpering
two of the pins forces drive to SATA150 and BIOS recognized it on channel
one with no trouble.
Thanks for lending ear and help.
New issue, new thread.
Norman

"Norman" wrote in message
...

"Mike M" wrote in message
...
I see that nForce2 drivers are available for Win Me. This appears to be
the last nForce chipset for which Win9x drivers are available. I have
two
boxes with nForce chipsets, one has an nForce3 250 and the other an
nForce4 ultra and knew that no Win9x drivers were available for either
of
these.

Interesting, I did not know that, that is to move to nForce 3 or 4
basically
needs newer than W9x. Or will it install with OS drivers? Just no updated
ones.

SATA on in BIOS which is preferred default for OS install

You should be able to select which disk/controller has the boot HD
device
in the bios. On my systems this appears as the option above that where
the boot order is selected (such as 1) Floppy, 2) CD-ROM, 3) Hard disk).

Seems to be very much the same. Subsequent screens to pick from list for
removable, optical, HDD, etc installed. But, then never got that far with
SATA. Also have screen for booting from network I think.

Turning SATA on in BIOS installs a second "Standard Dual PCI IDE
Controller"

That's normal. On my boxes running XP these appear as Parallel ATA
Controller and Serial ATA Controller. It all depends on the text string
in the inf file used when the driver was installed and I seem to think
that before installing the nForce drivers the description was similar to
what you are seeing but perhaps with (Parallel) or (Serial) appended.

It doesn't differentiate them on this box in any way other than knowing
that
if you turn SATA off in BIOS, one set disappears.

Or ~137GB decimal.

Only those selling hard drives use decimal g. Everyone else working
with computers uses the binary GB which is 2**30 or 1,073,741,824 bytes.

Maybe someone should include it in spec requiring such labeling. Slap
them,
that is. Always some darned renegade trying to confuse world. Chrysler
finally abandoned its left hand thread on wheel nut for left side of
vehicle
a few years back. Show me a bread company that does the same thing with
the
twisty-tie and I'll leave the other brands on the shelf. Probably why so
many men throw it away and tuck the end of the wrapper upon opening. And I
might do the same thing with HDD. Leave the others on the shelf.

No RAID in WME.

You might find a third party add-on RAID card that supports Win Me
however
personally I don't think that any Win9x system including Win Me warrants
expenditure on new hardware, or at least not specialist hardware such as
this. All the more so given the limitations of the FAT32 filing system.

I was considering venturing into the area of RAID. But am now thinking it
might not be worthwhile. Am now thinking that the move from FAT to NTFS
might have more advantage in the area of reliability, as a first step
anyway. Am I wrong?
Pushing the system to the point of gaining much advantage by striping
would
likely show that I'm really in need of CPU and associated upgrade anyway.
(2GB Dual channel RAM, limited to 1G in ini file) So only reason to RAID
would be added reliability of redundancy, which carries its own price. Yet
no guarantee of something happening on the order of catatropic inside the
box. And still an external can get caught up in such an event.


MSDOS Compatibility Mode.
Have a look at MS KB 130179 - "Troubleshooting MS-DOS Compatibility Mode
on Hard Disks" (http://support.microsoft.com?kbid=130179) and see if
this
helps in resolving your Compatibility Mode problems. It lists a number
of
possible causes for such problems together with some suggestions as to
fixes.

Thanks for the link. It appears a little different than the last one I
followed. I will pursue it carefully hoping to nail the cause.


Getting out of compatibility mode can sometimes be far from easy. In
some
cases it can only be done by reinstalling Win Me.

Been there, done that. Not fun. On the lucky occaisons, I immediately shut
down, disconnected extra drives, booted into SAFE mode. One time I was
lucky
enough to have restore points. The other times relied on registry
restores.
But at least once they didn't exist. As a precaution, when now dabbling in
such a way that maybe such points had not yet been created, or got blown
away and not yet recreated, I get into system information, run scanreg and
tell it to make backup, and run system restore creating yet another point.
This at least eliminates factors outside what I am immediately doing as a
culprit. (suspenders and a belt).

Best of luck.
--
I guess I got lucky. Thanks. Accomplished the complete drive copy to
another, despite the software leaving several assumptions as I proceded,
not
even clear that it was to erase new drive versus old. Always canceling
when
in doubt, that won't work with this software. Did it with floppy version
and
took 16 hours to finish. HDD light best indicator that it was still
working.
Once complete I shut down and unhooked drive. The reason brings a
question.
If I had allowed it to boot up with both drives, one of them designated as
boot, certainly it would have written over the file placed on root from
system restore. What ill effects might this have brought,if swapping from
one drive to the other, other than possibly not having any restore points
and possibly having to restart system restore for future use?

Off to investigate SATA.
"I'll be back!"
Norman

Mike Maltby



Norman wrote:

As you already know you shouldn't have tried adding the new drives
at the same time as swapping out the mobo but I would probably have
done the same g. Some points to ponder.
Grinning with you on that.

a) Have you installed the new motherboards chipset drivers?
Yes.


b) Are those drivers Win Me compatible (maybe not if it has sata
controllers)
Yes, but not really certain on SATA level of things. NForce2 chipset.
SATA on in BIOS which is preferred default for OS install and for any
unused devices I've seen recommendations that they are turned off in
device manager, not BIOS. Turning SATA on in BIOS installs a second
"Standard Dual PCI IDE Controller" with primary and secondary
controller. This is in parallel to the set for the normal IDE
hardware (PATA drives, CD, etc.). Each have their own IRQ assigned.
So, for WME at least, drivers appear to be rather standard. Chipset
drivers that do install for MOBO are Ethernet, GART, MemCtl, and
SMBus.


c) You do realise that Win Me cannot access drives larger than
128GB, or at least beyond 128GB without both motherboard and
operating system support for large drives. Win Me does not. Your
mobo bios should hopefully support 48bit LBA addressing provided it
is no more than say three years old.
Or ~137GB decimal. I've limited the drives to that boundary for now.
No literature saying it does 48bit LBA, but strongly suspect it does.
I have not heard any complaints from those running XP on this MOBO,
related to this issue.


d) I don't know of any SATA drivers for use with Win Me but this
doesn't mean they don't exist and it looks as if you might have one.
The board has RAID drivers available for XP use. No RAID in WME. The
only other restriction that pops to mind is possibly not being able
to boot WME from SATA drive. But then the Seagate tech thought I
could, with WME. Hmmn?


Whilst you have given what seems like a very full description of all
that you have done I feel it might be helpful if you were now to
concentrate on one problem at a time rather than post such a long
post.
You are absolutely right on how to procede. And that is my intent.
Going to attempt adding the 2nd HDD again making it a copy of first.
Then disconnect it and use as life saver.
But wanted some confidence and maybe missed ideas from someone such as
yourself. Also Seagate tech was deferring MSDOS issues. You know,
blame it on the other guy. But should we find the issue, I think I
shall not pass it back to him. I can't be the only one with such and
if they want to sell Seagate drives they should at least be able to
handle such issues to get past an install.

BTW, found my boot. Stuck in my bum from first issue (grin issue
above)

Thanks. I'll post back as it procedes.
Norman

"Mike M" wrote in
:

c) You do realise that Win Me cannot access drives larger than 128GB, or
at least beyond 128GB without both motherboard and operating system
support for large drives. Win Me does not.

Could you kindly elaborate on that?
Presumably it's a limitation for internal hd's?

I'm using Me on an old laptop which is destined to be an "emergency"
computer in prolonged power cuts (so has to be reasonably low power
consumption.)

Your mobo bios should
hopefully support 48bit LBA addressing provided it is no more than say
three years old.

I just ran intel's "48lbachk.exe" but it says it can't determine either way
from the bios.

I've connected up a 400 G usb external hd (fat32), & that seems to read &
write ok.

I read earlier today that *theoretically* Me can access up to 8 terabyte
volumes, which would keep me going for some time ;-) I haven't found more
concrete info' yet though.

d) I don't know of any SATA drivers for use with Win Me but this doesn't
mean they don't exist and it looks as if you might have one.



Because I'll need to access different hd's externally & most are now SATA,
I've got a pcmcia 2 port sata with Me drivers which accesses 250 G sata
hd's ok. They're all ntfs so I've installed Paragon's "Mount everything 3"
which seems fine reading quite large folders ( holding about 15000 files )
I'm thinking of buying this to get write access too. I wonder if any of you
resident experts have any experience of this tool?

thanks,
john

c) You do realise that Win Me cannot access drives larger than
128GB, or at least beyond 128GB without both motherboard and
operating system support for large drives. Win Me does not.

Could you kindly elaborate on that?
Presumably it's a limitation for internal hd's?

No, it's a limitation of the number of bits used when addressing the disk.
To access drives beyond 128GB requires the bios, motherboard and operating
system to support 48-bit LBA (Logical Block Addressing) as I mentioned in
the next paragraph.

I read earlier today that *theoretically* Me can access up to 8
terabyte volumes

This has nothing to do with Win Me but rather the FAT32 filing system.
You can read more about the FAT32 filing system at KB184006 "Limitations
of FAT32 File System" (http://support.microsoft.com?kbid=184006) which
includes the 8TB you mention although such a drive would be totally
impracticable as the wastage would be massive. The equally old and
outdated KB126855 "Windows Support for Large IDE Hard Disks"
(http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=126855) whilst referring to INT13 and
LBA addressing also ignores the need for 48 bit addressing to address
drives 128GB which weren't supported until XP SP1 and Win2K SP3 KB303013
"How to enable 48-bit Logical Block Addressing support for ATAPI disk
drives in Windows XP" (http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=303013).

I mentioned earlier that I wasn't aware of SATA drivers available for Win
Me. From the Gigabyte web site it looks as if there might be SATA drivers
available for boards using the nForce 2 and nForce 3 chipsets although
those same boards warn that Win 9x systems such as Win Me are not
supported. I guess it's a case of caveat emptor.
--
Mike Maltby



john e wrote:

"Mike M" wrote in
:

c) You do realise that Win Me cannot access drives larger than
128GB, or at least beyond 128GB without both motherboard and
operating system support for large drives. Win Me does not.

Could you kindly elaborate on that?
Presumably it's a limitation for internal hd's?

No, it's a limitation of the number of bits used when addressing the disk.
To access drives beyong 128GB requires the bios, motherboard and operating
system to support 48 bit LBA

I'm using Me on an old laptop which is destined to be an "emergency"
computer in prolonged power cuts (so has to be reasonably low power
consumption.)

Your mobo bios should
hopefully support 48bit LBA addressing provided it is no more than
say three years old.

I just ran intel's "48lbachk.exe" but it says it can't determine
either way from the bios.

I've connected up a 400 G usb external hd (fat32), & that seems to
read & write ok.

I read earlier today that *theoretically* Me can access up to 8
terabyte volumes, which would keep me going for some time ;-) I
haven't found more concrete info' yet though.

d) I don't know of any SATA drivers for use with Win Me but this
doesn't mean they don't exist and it looks as if you might have one.



Because I'll need to access different hd's externally & most are now
SATA, I've got a pcmcia 2 port sata with Me drivers which accesses
250 G sata hd's ok. They're all ntfs so I've installed Paragon's
"Mount everything 3" which seems fine reading quite large folders (
holding about 15000 files ) I'm thinking of buying this to get write
access too. I wonder if any of you resident experts have any
experience of this tool?

thanks,
john

"Mike M" wrote in
:

Thank you for the prompt response.

No, it's a limitation of the number of bits used when addressing the
disk. To access drives beyond 128GB requires the bios, motherboard and
operating system to support 48-bit LBA (Logical Block Addressing) as I
mentioned in the next paragraph.


Yes, I understand the need for 32 bit addressing on large volumes.

When I connect several 128 G hd's to this laptop via firewire, usb, &
sata, they clearly have their own hardware dependant localised addressing
for the physically attached hd's. However, I'm wondering how they all
present this to Me? For example, do they share some common 48 bit "driver"
or must Me deal with the 48 bit addressing on a per interface basis?
The reason for my "only internal hd's" question was that all 3 methods of
connecting hd's are alien to the laptop's bios.

Scanning this group's posts, it looks like you have a very good list of
references, so maybe you could point me to something relevant please?

I read earlier today that *theoretically* Me can access up to 8
terabyte volumes

This has nothing to do with Win Me but rather the FAT32 filing system.
You can read more about the FAT32 filing system at KB184006
"Limitations of FAT32 File System"

Thank you for those URL's.

I mentioned earlier that I wasn't aware of SATA drivers available for
Win Me. From the Gigabyte web site it looks as if there might be SATA
drivers available for boards using the nForce 2 and nForce 3 chipsets
although those same boards warn that Win 9x systems such as Win Me are
not supported. I guess it's a case of caveat emptor.
--


It's a "Silicon Image" chipset on this sata pcmcia card.

thanks again,
john