second 120 GB HD under win98 - anyone has the solution to my problem?

Thought I had investigated what had to be done, but unfortunately I am
now stuck.

In short, I have put in a second hard disk with its own controller card.
The computer sees the disk ok, partionioning the disk made win98 see the
disk and its capacity ok. Formatting the disk went ok, but win98 seem
not to work after this second hard disk was formatted.

Details:

My daughter has my old DELL Dimension XPS R450 with Win 98 and 10 GB
Hard Disk, and today I put in a second 120 GB ATA-100 disk (Seagate) as
slave, connected to a separate PCI ATA-100 controller card from Promise.
I learnt that with its own controller card, the computer would recognize
the full capacity of this relatively large disk, thus avoiding possible
BIOS limitations in the R450.

Physical installation went fine, thanks to good manuals from DELL,
Seagate and Promise. At startup, the Promise BIOS saw the Seagate 120 GB
HD as it should. And win 98 started and saw, as it should now, only the
10 GB (C boot HD.

After some confusion why the fdisk did not see the full capacity of the
120 GB disk, I learnt to install a MS fix to make Win 98 fdisk to
recognize large disks. After some failures running fdisk under win98
from a DOS window, I restarted Win 98 in DOS mode, and managed to use
fdisk to create a full partition on the 120 GB second disk (reported
some 115 GB capacity when done).

After reboot, win 98 started normally and the My Computer Window now saw
both C: (the old 10 GB boot HD) and D: (the new 120 GB HD). I first
tried to do a format on D: from the Win 98 GUI, but after an endless
wait I realized that the format had stopped and crashed. After a reboot
to Win 98 DOS mode, I issued the DOS command FORMAT D: , and the format
worked. Even if the numbers reported at the start was wrong, the end
result reported by format was some 115 GB.

I felt relief that I eventually succeeded, closed win98 and restarted
the computer....

Total chaos, the computer startup went extremely slow, and this first
attempt throw me into Safe Mode. I decided to do a new startup. It went
extremely slow, but eventually, maybe after 10-20 minutes, win98 showed.
Everything i tried in windows took ages to respond. I had to leave
for home this evening after clicking on the "My Computer" to see if it
opens up and shows the hard disks. My hope is that this is something
win98 has to go through once to learn something for the registry or
whatever. I asked my daughter to leave the computer for the night to see
if it gets through this, but I have little hope. The mouse is moving but
other things react extremely slow.

So, what have I done wrong and what to do about it? I find no clues
using Google.

To summarize, the computer seems to recognize the new second 120 GM hard
disk ok. After fdisk, win 98 saw the new D: ok and that it was 115 GB.

After format D: from DOS mode, win98 seems to not cope with this new
hard disk and cannot run, maybe extremely, extremely, slow.

My only option right now is to disconnect the new hard drive and pull
out the ATA-100 controller card, and hope that everything goes back to
where it was before I started this operation.


Jan

"Jan Flodin" wrote in message ...

My daughter has my old DELL Dimension XPS R450 with Win 98 and 10 GB
Hard Disk, and today I put in a second 120 GB ATA-100 disk (Seagate) as
slave, connected to a separate PCI ATA-100 controller card from Promise.
I learnt that with its own controller card, the computer would recognize
the full capacity of this relatively large disk, thus avoiding possible
BIOS limitations in the R450.

Meaning you didn't try it without the card?

FWIW, I've got an old XPS R400 here that has recognized correctly a WD
60GB drive. That with no drive overlay, controller card, or BIOS updates
ever being applied. I'm almost certain that it would also have no problem
up to the 128GB limit.

Phoenix BIOS 4.0 Release 6.0 version A09

"Jan Flodin" wrote in message
...
Thought I had investigated what had to be done, but unfortunately I am
now stuck.

In short, I have put in a second hard disk with its own controller card.
The computer sees the disk ok, partionioning the disk made win98 see the
disk and its capacity ok. Formatting the disk went ok, but win98 seem
not to work after this second hard disk was formatted.

Details:

My daughter has my old DELL Dimension XPS R450 with Win 98 and 10 GB
Hard Disk, and today I put in a second 120 GB ATA-100 disk (Seagate) as
slave, connected to a separate PCI ATA-100 controller card from Promise.
I learnt that with its own controller card, the computer would recognize
the full capacity of this relatively large disk, thus avoiding possible
BIOS limitations in the R450.

Physical installation went fine, thanks to good manuals from DELL,
Seagate and Promise. At startup, the Promise BIOS saw the Seagate 120 GB
HD as it should. And win 98 started and saw, as it should now, only the
10 GB (C boot HD.

After some confusion why the fdisk did not see the full capacity of the
120 GB disk, I learnt to install a MS fix to make Win 98 fdisk to
recognize large disks. After some failures running fdisk under win98
from a DOS window, I restarted Win 98 in DOS mode, and managed to use
fdisk to create a full partition on the 120 GB second disk (reported
some 115 GB capacity when done).

After reboot, win 98 started normally and the My Computer Window now saw
both C: (the old 10 GB boot HD) and D: (the new 120 GB HD). I first
tried to do a format on D: from the Win 98 GUI, but after an endless
wait I realized that the format had stopped and crashed. After a reboot
to Win 98 DOS mode, I issued the DOS command FORMAT D: , and the format
worked. Even if the numbers reported at the start was wrong, the end
result reported by format was some 115 GB.

I felt relief that I eventually succeeded, closed win98 and restarted
the computer....

Total chaos, the computer startup went extremely slow, and this first
attempt throw me into Safe Mode. I decided to do a new startup. It went
extremely slow, but eventually, maybe after 10-20 minutes, win98 showed.
Everything i tried in windows took ages to respond. I had to leave
for home this evening after clicking on the "My Computer" to see if it
opens up and shows the hard disks. My hope is that this is something
win98 has to go through once to learn something for the registry or
whatever. I asked my daughter to leave the computer for the night to see
if it gets through this, but I have little hope. The mouse is moving but
other things react extremely slow.

So, what have I done wrong and what to do about it? I find no clues
using Google.

To summarize, the computer seems to recognize the new second 120 GM hard
disk ok. After fdisk, win 98 saw the new D: ok and that it was 115 GB.

After format D: from DOS mode, win98 seems to not cope with this new
hard disk and cannot run, maybe extremely, extremely, slow.

My only option right now is to disconnect the new hard drive and pull
out the ATA-100 controller card, and hope that everything goes back to
where it was before I started this operation.


Jan

You provided mostly throrough information. However, I saw no mention of the
software drive installation for the Promise controller for the windows
environment. Am assuming you did not install it. This would cause slow
drive access in windows. Secondly, the Promise ATA 100 controller has not
been manufactured by Promise for a couple of years. Even though the hard
drive appears to show the correct capacity, the controller was only designed
to work with hard drives up to 80GB. So this itself may be a problem. If
you're referring to the current TX2 version, there should be no problem, but
the driver for windows is still required for full speed operation.

I would not make any partition in excess of 64GB with even the latest fdisk
And, unless I was creating a duplicate copy of the boot partition of the
other hard drive, I would partition the 120GB drive as one extended
partition with multiple logical drives. And, I would not be using fdisk at
all, rather, some later partitioning and formatting tool that can handle any
late hard drive capacity. Such is available from the hard drive's
manufacturer, usually, their website.
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/...s/discwiz.html
DO NOT INSTALL THE BIOS EXTENDER.

Finally, there is no first or initial 120GB hard drive. So, there cannot be
second 120GB hard drive. You have 2 hard drives, not two 120GB hard drives
per your subject line and text indications. Reading the post shows
otherwise, so this leaves the reader wondering where the first 120GB hard
drive is.

Lil' Dave wrote:
"Jan Flodin" wrote in message
...

Thought I had investigated what had to be done, but unfortunately I am
now stuck.

In short, I have put in a second hard disk with its own controller card.
The computer sees the disk ok, partionioning the disk made win98 see the
disk and its capacity ok. Formatting the disk went ok, but win98 seem
not to work after this second hard disk was formatted.

Details:

My daughter has my old DELL Dimension XPS R450 with Win 98 and 10 GB
Hard Disk, and today I put in a second 120 GB ATA-100 disk (Seagate) as
slave, connected to a separate PCI ATA-100 controller card from Promise.
I learnt that with its own controller card, the computer would recognize
the full capacity of this relatively large disk, thus avoiding possible
BIOS limitations in the R450.

Physical installation went fine, thanks to good manuals from DELL,
Seagate and Promise. At startup, the Promise BIOS saw the Seagate 120 GB
HD as it should. And win 98 started and saw, as it should now, only the
10 GB (C boot HD.

After some confusion why the fdisk did not see the full capacity of the
120 GB disk, I learnt to install a MS fix to make Win 98 fdisk to
recognize large disks. After some failures running fdisk under win98
from a DOS window, I restarted Win 98 in DOS mode, and managed to use
fdisk to create a full partition on the 120 GB second disk (reported
some 115 GB capacity when done).

After reboot, win 98 started normally and the My Computer Window now saw
both C: (the old 10 GB boot HD) and D: (the new 120 GB HD). I first
tried to do a format on D: from the Win 98 GUI, but after an endless
wait I realized that the format had stopped and crashed. After a reboot
to Win 98 DOS mode, I issued the DOS command FORMAT D: , and the format
worked. Even if the numbers reported at the start was wrong, the end
result reported by format was some 115 GB.

I felt relief that I eventually succeeded, closed win98 and restarted
the computer....

Total chaos, the computer startup went extremely slow, and this first
attempt throw me into Safe Mode. I decided to do a new startup. It went
extremely slow, but eventually, maybe after 10-20 minutes, win98 showed.
Everything i tried in windows took ages to respond. I had to leave
for home this evening after clicking on the "My Computer" to see if it
opens up and shows the hard disks. My hope is that this is something
win98 has to go through once to learn something for the registry or
whatever. I asked my daughter to leave the computer for the night to see
if it gets through this, but I have little hope. The mouse is moving but
other things react extremely slow.

So, what have I done wrong and what to do about it? I find no clues
using Google.

To summarize, the computer seems to recognize the new second 120 GM hard
disk ok. After fdisk, win 98 saw the new D: ok and that it was 115 GB.

After format D: from DOS mode, win98 seems to not cope with this new
hard disk and cannot run, maybe extremely, extremely, slow.

My only option right now is to disconnect the new hard drive and pull
out the ATA-100 controller card, and hope that everything goes back to
where it was before I started this operation.


Jan


You provided mostly throrough information. However, I saw no mention of the
software drive installation for the Promise controller for the windows
environment. Am assuming you did not install it. This would cause slow
drive access in windows. Secondly, the Promise ATA 100 controller has not
been manufactured by Promise for a couple of years. Even though the hard
drive appears to show the correct capacity, the controller was only designed
to work with hard drives up to 80GB. So this itself may be a problem. If
you're referring to the current TX2 version, there should be no problem, but
the driver for windows is still required for full speed operation.

I would not make any partition in excess of 64GB with even the latest fdisk
And, unless I was creating a duplicate copy of the boot partition of the
other hard drive, I would partition the 120GB drive as one extended
partition with multiple logical drives. And, I would not be using fdisk at
all, rather, some later partitioning and formatting tool that can handle any
late hard drive capacity. Such is available from the hard drive's
manufacturer, usually, their website.
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/...s/discwiz.html
DO NOT INSTALL THE BIOS EXTENDER.

Finally, there is no first or initial 120GB hard drive. So, there cannot be
second 120GB hard drive. You have 2 hard drives, not two 120GB hard drives
per your subject line and text indications. Reading the post shows
otherwise, so this leaves the reader wondering where the first 120GB hard
drive is.




Dave,

Thank you for your very constructive advice, which I will try to follow
it tomorrow when I will try again to resolve the situation. I did indeed
install the driver that came on the diskette from Promise, and I recall
TX2 was in the name string that appears when the controller card boots
up and reports about 115 GB on that second hard disk. The first disk,
that came installed in the XPS R450 when it was new, is 10 GB and is the
bootable disk, (C, connected to a connector on the system board. My
subject line was confusing, I admit. The first hard disk is 10 GB, the
second (the one I am trying to install) is 120 GB. I have to realize
English is not my native tounge and think twice before I write...

I will check, in safe mode, that the Promise driver is still there and
also try to check the hard drive to see what it reports. I did, with
fdisk (I could not get disc wizard, that I downloaded from Seagate, to
find my new hard disk despite that I reported the correct model number
to it, as reported from the controller card during boot up) create one
single DOS primary partition, as large as possible, giving some 115 GB.

One question: If I get this up and running, could I partition with one
10 GB DOS primary partition and the rest as, as you suggest, one
extended partition with logical drives? If I later take out the old 10GB
HD and use just this 120 GB disk, could I set its primary partition to
active, change the jumper settings on the HD so this 120 GB HD becomes
master, still using the promise controller card and leave the IDE
connector on the system board empty? And reinstall win98 on this new HDs
primary and active partition? After all, this DELL XPS R450 has been
used frequently during some six years now, so this HD might be close to EOL.

Regards,

Jan

Dave,

I realize now it should have been "secondary" instead of "second" in the
subject line. Sorry about that.

Both the disk and the controller card are for ATA-100, with the 80-pin
connector cable.

Jan

Lil' Dave wrote:
"Jan Flodin" wrote in message
...

Thought I had investigated what had to be done, but unfortunately I am
now stuck.

In short, I have put in a second hard disk with its own controller card.
The computer sees the disk ok, partionioning the disk made win98 see the
disk and its capacity ok. Formatting the disk went ok, but win98 seem
not to work after this second hard disk was formatted.

Details:

My daughter has my old DELL Dimension XPS R450 with Win 98 and 10 GB
Hard Disk, and today I put in a second 120 GB ATA-100 disk (Seagate) as
slave, connected to a separate PCI ATA-100 controller card from Promise.
I learnt that with its own controller card, the computer would recognize
the full capacity of this relatively large disk, thus avoiding possible
BIOS limitations in the R450.

Physical installation went fine, thanks to good manuals from DELL,
Seagate and Promise. At startup, the Promise BIOS saw the Seagate 120 GB
HD as it should. And win 98 started and saw, as it should now, only the
10 GB (C boot HD.

After some confusion why the fdisk did not see the full capacity of the
120 GB disk, I learnt to install a MS fix to make Win 98 fdisk to
recognize large disks. After some failures running fdisk under win98
from a DOS window, I restarted Win 98 in DOS mode, and managed to use
fdisk to create a full partition on the 120 GB second disk (reported
some 115 GB capacity when done).

After reboot, win 98 started normally and the My Computer Window now saw
both C: (the old 10 GB boot HD) and D: (the new 120 GB HD). I first
tried to do a format on D: from the Win 98 GUI, but after an endless
wait I realized that the format had stopped and crashed. After a reboot
to Win 98 DOS mode, I issued the DOS command FORMAT D: , and the format
worked. Even if the numbers reported at the start was wrong, the end
result reported by format was some 115 GB.

I felt relief that I eventually succeeded, closed win98 and restarted
the computer....

Total chaos, the computer startup went extremely slow, and this first
attempt throw me into Safe Mode. I decided to do a new startup. It went
extremely slow, but eventually, maybe after 10-20 minutes, win98 showed.
Everything i tried in windows took ages to respond. I had to leave
for home this evening after clicking on the "My Computer" to see if it
opens up and shows the hard disks. My hope is that this is something
win98 has to go through once to learn something for the registry or
whatever. I asked my daughter to leave the computer for the night to see
if it gets through this, but I have little hope. The mouse is moving but
other things react extremely slow.

So, what have I done wrong and what to do about it? I find no clues
using Google.

To summarize, the computer seems to recognize the new second 120 GM hard
disk ok. After fdisk, win 98 saw the new D: ok and that it was 115 GB.

After format D: from DOS mode, win98 seems to not cope with this new
hard disk and cannot run, maybe extremely, extremely, slow.

My only option right now is to disconnect the new hard drive and pull
out the ATA-100 controller card, and hope that everything goes back to
where it was before I started this operation.


Jan


You provided mostly throrough information. However, I saw no mention of the
software drive installation for the Promise controller for the windows
environment. Am assuming you did not install it. This would cause slow
drive access in windows. Secondly, the Promise ATA 100 controller has not
been manufactured by Promise for a couple of years. Even though the hard
drive appears to show the correct capacity, the controller was only designed
to work with hard drives up to 80GB. So this itself may be a problem. If
you're referring to the current TX2 version, there should be no problem, but
the driver for windows is still required for full speed operation.

I would not make any partition in excess of 64GB with even the latest fdisk
And, unless I was creating a duplicate copy of the boot partition of the
other hard drive, I would partition the 120GB drive as one extended
partition with multiple logical drives. And, I would not be using fdisk at
all, rather, some later partitioning and formatting tool that can handle any
late hard drive capacity. Such is available from the hard drive's
manufacturer, usually, their website.
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/...s/discwiz.html
DO NOT INSTALL THE BIOS EXTENDER.

Finally, there is no first or initial 120GB hard drive. So, there cannot be
second 120GB hard drive. You have 2 hard drives, not two 120GB hard drives
per your subject line and text indications. Reading the post shows
otherwise, so this leaves the reader wondering where the first 120GB hard
drive is.

"Jan Flodin" wrote in message
...
Lil' Dave wrote:
"Jan Flodin" wrote in message
...

Thought I had investigated what had to be done, but unfortunately I am
now stuck.

In short, I have put in a second hard disk with its own controller card.
The computer sees the disk ok, partionioning the disk made win98 see the
disk and its capacity ok. Formatting the disk went ok, but win98 seem
not to work after this second hard disk was formatted.

Details:

My daughter has my old DELL Dimension XPS R450 with Win 98 and 10 GB
Hard Disk, and today I put in a second 120 GB ATA-100 disk (Seagate) as
slave, connected to a separate PCI ATA-100 controller card from Promise.
I learnt that with its own controller card, the computer would recognize
the full capacity of this relatively large disk, thus avoiding possible
BIOS limitations in the R450.

Physical installation went fine, thanks to good manuals from DELL,
Seagate and Promise. At startup, the Promise BIOS saw the Seagate 120 GB
HD as it should. And win 98 started and saw, as it should now, only the
10 GB (C boot HD.

After some confusion why the fdisk did not see the full capacity of the
120 GB disk, I learnt to install a MS fix to make Win 98 fdisk to
recognize large disks. After some failures running fdisk under win98
from a DOS window, I restarted Win 98 in DOS mode, and managed to use
fdisk to create a full partition on the 120 GB second disk (reported
some 115 GB capacity when done).

After reboot, win 98 started normally and the My Computer Window now saw
both C: (the old 10 GB boot HD) and D: (the new 120 GB HD). I first
tried to do a format on D: from the Win 98 GUI, but after an endless
wait I realized that the format had stopped and crashed. After a reboot
to Win 98 DOS mode, I issued the DOS command FORMAT D: , and the format
worked. Even if the numbers reported at the start was wrong, the end
result reported by format was some 115 GB.

I felt relief that I eventually succeeded, closed win98 and restarted
the computer....

Total chaos, the computer startup went extremely slow, and this first
attempt throw me into Safe Mode. I decided to do a new startup. It went
extremely slow, but eventually, maybe after 10-20 minutes, win98 showed.
Everything i tried in windows took ages to respond. I had to leave
for home this evening after clicking on the "My Computer" to see if it
opens up and shows the hard disks. My hope is that this is something
win98 has to go through once to learn something for the registry or
whatever. I asked my daughter to leave the computer for the night to see
if it gets through this, but I have little hope. The mouse is moving but
other things react extremely slow.

So, what have I done wrong and what to do about it? I find no clues
using Google.

To summarize, the computer seems to recognize the new second 120 GM hard
disk ok. After fdisk, win 98 saw the new D: ok and that it was 115 GB.

After format D: from DOS mode, win98 seems to not cope with this new
hard disk and cannot run, maybe extremely, extremely, slow.

My only option right now is to disconnect the new hard drive and pull
out the ATA-100 controller card, and hope that everything goes back to
where it was before I started this operation.


Jan


You provided mostly throrough information. However, I saw no mention of
the
software drive installation for the Promise controller for the windows
environment. Am assuming you did not install it. This would cause slow
drive access in windows. Secondly, the Promise ATA 100 controller has
not
been manufactured by Promise for a couple of years. Even though the
hard
drive appears to show the correct capacity, the controller was only
designed
to work with hard drives up to 80GB. So this itself may be a problem.
If
you're referring to the current TX2 version, there should be no problem,
but
the driver for windows is still required for full speed operation.

I would not make any partition in excess of 64GB with even the latest
fdisk
And, unless I was creating a duplicate copy of the boot partition of the
other hard drive, I would partition the 120GB drive as one extended
partition with multiple logical drives. And, I would not be using fdisk
at
all, rather, some later partitioning and formatting tool that can handle
any
late hard drive capacity. Such is available from the hard drive's
manufacturer, usually, their website.
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/...s/discwiz.html
DO NOT INSTALL THE BIOS EXTENDER.

Finally, there is no first or initial 120GB hard drive. So, there cannot
be
second 120GB hard drive. You have 2 hard drives, not two 120GB hard
drives
per your subject line and text indications. Reading the post shows
otherwise, so this leaves the reader wondering where the first 120GB
hard
drive is.




Dave,

Thank you for your very constructive advice, which I will try to follow
it tomorrow when I will try again to resolve the situation. I did indeed
install the driver that came on the diskette from Promise, and I recall
TX2 was in the name string that appears when the controller card boots
up and reports about 115 GB on that second hard disk. The first disk,
that came installed in the XPS R450 when it was new, is 10 GB and is the
bootable disk, (C, connected to a connector on the system board. My
subject line was confusing, I admit. The first hard disk is 10 GB, the
second (the one I am trying to install) is 120 GB. I have to realize
English is not my native tounge and think twice before I write...

I will check, in safe mode, that the Promise driver is still there and
also try to check the hard drive to see what it reports. I did, with
fdisk (I could not get disc wizard, that I downloaded from Seagate, to
find my new hard disk despite that I reported the correct model number
to it, as reported from the controller card during boot up) create one
single DOS primary partition, as large as possible, giving some 115 GB.


The Promise driver may be there in safe mode, but it won't be working.
If you're trying to do all this partitioning in windows or its safe mode,
stop.
Download the boot diskette version of Seagate's tools. Use that.

One question: If I get this up and running, could I partition with one
10 GB DOS primary partition and the rest as, as you suggest, one
extended partition with logical drives? If I later take out the old 10GB
HD and use just this 120 GB disk, could I set its primary partition to
active, change the jumper settings on the HD so this 120 GB HD becomes
master, still using the promise controller card and leave the IDE
connector on the system board empty? And reinstall win98 on this new HDs
primary and active partition? After all, this DELL XPS R450 has been
used frequently during some six years now, so this HD might be close to
EOL.

Regards,

Jan

Its not a matter of being able to create partitions you described.. There
may be
a problem if your PC uses a restore disc, and requires the active partition
be
on the locally connected hard drive connected to the mainboard.

Lil' Dave wrote:
"Jan Flodin" wrote in message
...

Lil' Dave wrote:

"Jan Flodin" wrote in message
...


Thought I had investigated what had to be done, but unfortunately I am
now stuck.

In short, I have put in a second hard disk with its own controller card.
The computer sees the disk ok, partionioning the disk made win98 see the
disk and its capacity ok. Formatting the disk went ok, but win98 seem
not to work after this second hard disk was formatted.

Details:

My daughter has my old DELL Dimension XPS R450 with Win 98 and 10 GB
Hard Disk, and today I put in a second 120 GB ATA-100 disk (Seagate) as
slave, connected to a separate PCI ATA-100 controller card from Promise.
I learnt that with its own controller card, the computer would recognize
the full capacity of this relatively large disk, thus avoiding possible
BIOS limitations in the R450.

Physical installation went fine, thanks to good manuals from DELL,
Seagate and Promise. At startup, the Promise BIOS saw the Seagate 120 GB
HD as it should. And win 98 started and saw, as it should now, only the
10 GB (C boot HD.

After some confusion why the fdisk did not see the full capacity of the
120 GB disk, I learnt to install a MS fix to make Win 98 fdisk to
recognize large disks. After some failures running fdisk under win98

from a DOS window, I restarted Win 98 in DOS mode, and managed to use

fdisk to create a full partition on the 120 GB second disk (reported
some 115 GB capacity when done).

After reboot, win 98 started normally and the My Computer Window now saw
both C: (the old 10 GB boot HD) and D: (the new 120 GB HD). I first
tried to do a format on D: from the Win 98 GUI, but after an endless
wait I realized that the format had stopped and crashed. After a reboot
to Win 98 DOS mode, I issued the DOS command FORMAT D: , and the format
worked. Even if the numbers reported at the start was wrong, the end
result reported by format was some 115 GB.

I felt relief that I eventually succeeded, closed win98 and restarted
the computer....

Total chaos, the computer startup went extremely slow, and this first
attempt throw me into Safe Mode. I decided to do a new startup. It went
extremely slow, but eventually, maybe after 10-20 minutes, win98 showed.
Everything i tried in windows took ages to respond. I had to leave
for home this evening after clicking on the "My Computer" to see if it
opens up and shows the hard disks. My hope is that this is something
win98 has to go through once to learn something for the registry or
whatever. I asked my daughter to leave the computer for the night to see
if it gets through this, but I have little hope. The mouse is moving but
other things react extremely slow.

So, what have I done wrong and what to do about it? I find no clues
using Google.

To summarize, the computer seems to recognize the new second 120 GM hard
disk ok. After fdisk, win 98 saw the new D: ok and that it was 115 GB.

After format D: from DOS mode, win98 seems to not cope with this new
hard disk and cannot run, maybe extremely, extremely, slow.

My only option right now is to disconnect the new hard drive and pull
out the ATA-100 controller card, and hope that everything goes back to
where it was before I started this operation.


Jan


You provided mostly throrough information. However, I saw no mention of

the

software drive installation for the Promise controller for the windows
environment. Am assuming you did not install it. This would cause slow
drive access in windows. Secondly, the Promise ATA 100 controller has

not

been manufactured by Promise for a couple of years. Even though the

hard

drive appears to show the correct capacity, the controller was only

designed

to work with hard drives up to 80GB. So this itself may be a problem.

If

you're referring to the current TX2 version, there should be no problem,

but

the driver for windows is still required for full speed operation.

I would not make any partition in excess of 64GB with even the latest

fdisk

And, unless I was creating a duplicate copy of the boot partition of the
other hard drive, I would partition the 120GB drive as one extended
partition with multiple logical drives. And, I would not be using fdisk

at

all, rather, some later partitioning and formatting tool that can handle

any

late hard drive capacity. Such is available from the hard drive's
manufacturer, usually, their website.
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/...s/discwiz.html
DO NOT INSTALL THE BIOS EXTENDER.

Finally, there is no first or initial 120GB hard drive. So, there cannot

be

second 120GB hard drive. You have 2 hard drives, not two 120GB hard

drives

per your subject line and text indications. Reading the post shows
otherwise, so this leaves the reader wondering where the first 120GB

hard

drive is.




Dave,

Thank you for your very constructive advice, which I will try to follow
it tomorrow when I will try again to resolve the situation. I did indeed
install the driver that came on the diskette from Promise, and I recall
TX2 was in the name string that appears when the controller card boots
up and reports about 115 GB on that second hard disk. The first disk,
that came installed in the XPS R450 when it was new, is 10 GB and is the
bootable disk, (C, connected to a connector on the system board. My
subject line was confusing, I admit. The first hard disk is 10 GB, the
second (the one I am trying to install) is 120 GB. I have to realize
English is not my native tounge and think twice before I write...

I will check, in safe mode, that the Promise driver is still there and
also try to check the hard drive to see what it reports. I did, with
fdisk (I could not get disc wizard, that I downloaded from Seagate, to
find my new hard disk despite that I reported the correct model number
to it, as reported from the controller card during boot up) create one
single DOS primary partition, as large as possible, giving some 115 GB.



The Promise driver may be there in safe mode, but it won't be working.
If you're trying to do all this partitioning in windows or its safe mode,
stop.
Download the boot diskette version of Seagate's tools. Use that.


One question: If I get this up and running, could I partition with one
10 GB DOS primary partition and the rest as, as you suggest, one
extended partition with logical drives? If I later take out the old 10GB
HD and use just this 120 GB disk, could I set its primary partition to
active, change the jumper settings on the HD so this 120 GB HD becomes
master, still using the promise controller card and leave the IDE
connector on the system board empty? And reinstall win98 on this new HDs
primary and active partition? After all, this DELL XPS R450 has been
used frequently during some six years now, so this HD might be close to

EOL.

Regards,

Jan


Its not a matter of being able to create partitions you described.. There
may be
a problem if your PC uses a restore disc, and requires the active partition
be
on the locally connected hard drive connected to the mainboard.



Dave,

Got the system up and running fine now.

SeaTools reported both the primary 10 GB and the secondary 120 GB fine
and using FAT32. The problem turned out that I tried to be smart and
avoid potential motherboead BIOS limitations by using a separate Ultra
ATA-100 controller for the 120 GB disk. With all the other goodies
installed in this DELL Computer, it was a "maximized" machine when I
bought it some six years ago, there were device conflicts between the
Promise TX2 driver and other stuff.
Since I don't have the competence, without reding a lot, to juggle
around with IRQs etc., I decided to try to remove the Promise controller
card and install the 120 GB HD as secondary to the middle connector,
using cable select, to the cable from the motherboard IDE connector.

I restored the system settings to the morning before I started this
whole adventure (thank God my LifeSaver was still running in there), and
then took out the controller.

And.... it worked quite ok.

Good thing it that I learnt a lot, and thanks for all advice, Dave.

I will stick to the KISS rule from now on.


Jan

"Jan Flodin" wrote in message
...
Lil' Dave wrote:
"Jan Flodin" wrote in message
...

Lil' Dave wrote:

"Jan Flodin" wrote in message
...


Thought I had investigated what had to be done, but unfortunately I am
now stuck.

In short, I have put in a second hard disk with its own controller
card.
The computer sees the disk ok, partionioning the disk made win98 see
the
disk and its capacity ok. Formatting the disk went ok, but win98 seem
not to work after this second hard disk was formatted.

Details:

My daughter has my old DELL Dimension XPS R450 with Win 98 and 10 GB
Hard Disk, and today I put in a second 120 GB ATA-100 disk (Seagate)
as
slave, connected to a separate PCI ATA-100 controller card from
Promise.
I learnt that with its own controller card, the computer would
recognize
the full capacity of this relatively large disk, thus avoiding
possible
BIOS limitations in the R450.

Physical installation went fine, thanks to good manuals from DELL,
Seagate and Promise. At startup, the Promise BIOS saw the Seagate 120
GB
HD as it should. And win 98 started and saw, as it should now, only
the
10 GB (C boot HD.

After some confusion why the fdisk did not see the full capacity of
the
120 GB disk, I learnt to install a MS fix to make Win 98 fdisk to
recognize large disks. After some failures running fdisk under win98

from a DOS window, I restarted Win 98 in DOS mode, and managed to use

fdisk to create a full partition on the 120 GB second disk (reported
some 115 GB capacity when done).

After reboot, win 98 started normally and the My Computer Window now
saw
both C: (the old 10 GB boot HD) and D: (the new 120 GB HD). I first
tried to do a format on D: from the Win 98 GUI, but after an endless
wait I realized that the format had stopped and crashed. After a
reboot
to Win 98 DOS mode, I issued the DOS command FORMAT D: , and the
format
worked. Even if the numbers reported at the start was wrong, the end
result reported by format was some 115 GB.

I felt relief that I eventually succeeded, closed win98 and restarted
the computer....

Total chaos, the computer startup went extremely slow, and this first
attempt throw me into Safe Mode. I decided to do a new startup. It
went
extremely slow, but eventually, maybe after 10-20 minutes, win98
showed.
Everything i tried in windows took ages to respond. I had to leave
for home this evening after clicking on the "My Computer" to see if it
opens up and shows the hard disks. My hope is that this is something
win98 has to go through once to learn something for the registry or
whatever. I asked my daughter to leave the computer for the night to
see
if it gets through this, but I have little hope. The mouse is moving
but
other things react extremely slow.

So, what have I done wrong and what to do about it? I find no clues
using Google.

To summarize, the computer seems to recognize the new second 120 GM
hard
disk ok. After fdisk, win 98 saw the new D: ok and that it was 115 GB.

After format D: from DOS mode, win98 seems to not cope with this new
hard disk and cannot run, maybe extremely, extremely, slow.

My only option right now is to disconnect the new hard drive and pull
out the ATA-100 controller card, and hope that everything goes back to
where it was before I started this operation.


Jan


You provided mostly throrough information. However, I saw no mention
of

the

software drive installation for the Promise controller for the windows
environment. Am assuming you did not install it. This would cause
slow
drive access in windows. Secondly, the Promise ATA 100 controller has

not

been manufactured by Promise for a couple of years. Even though the

hard

drive appears to show the correct capacity, the controller was only

designed

to work with hard drives up to 80GB. So this itself may be a problem.

If

you're referring to the current TX2 version, there should be no
problem,

but

the driver for windows is still required for full speed operation.

I would not make any partition in excess of 64GB with even the latest

fdisk

And, unless I was creating a duplicate copy of the boot partition of
the
other hard drive, I would partition the 120GB drive as one extended
partition with multiple logical drives. And, I would not be using
fdisk

at

all, rather, some later partitioning and formatting tool that can
handle

any

late hard drive capacity. Such is available from the hard drive's
manufacturer, usually, their website.
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/...s/discwiz.html
DO NOT INSTALL THE BIOS EXTENDER.

Finally, there is no first or initial 120GB hard drive. So, there
cannot

be

second 120GB hard drive. You have 2 hard drives, not two 120GB hard

drives

per your subject line and text indications. Reading the post shows
otherwise, so this leaves the reader wondering where the first 120GB

hard

drive is.




Dave,

Thank you for your very constructive advice, which I will try to follow
it tomorrow when I will try again to resolve the situation. I did indeed
install the driver that came on the diskette from Promise, and I recall
TX2 was in the name string that appears when the controller card boots
up and reports about 115 GB on that second hard disk. The first disk,
that came installed in the XPS R450 when it was new, is 10 GB and is the
bootable disk, (C, connected to a connector on the system board. My
subject line was confusing, I admit. The first hard disk is 10 GB, the
second (the one I am trying to install) is 120 GB. I have to realize
English is not my native tounge and think twice before I write...

I will check, in safe mode, that the Promise driver is still there and
also try to check the hard drive to see what it reports. I did, with
fdisk (I could not get disc wizard, that I downloaded from Seagate, to
find my new hard disk despite that I reported the correct model number
to it, as reported from the controller card during boot up) create one
single DOS primary partition, as large as possible, giving some 115 GB.



The Promise driver may be there in safe mode, but it won't be working.
If you're trying to do all this partitioning in windows or its safe
mode,
stop.
Download the boot diskette version of Seagate's tools. Use that.


One question: If I get this up and running, could I partition with one
10 GB DOS primary partition and the rest as, as you suggest, one
extended partition with logical drives? If I later take out the old 10GB
HD and use just this 120 GB disk, could I set its primary partition to
active, change the jumper settings on the HD so this 120 GB HD becomes
master, still using the promise controller card and leave the IDE
connector on the system board empty? And reinstall win98 on this new HDs
primary and active partition? After all, this DELL XPS R450 has been
used frequently during some six years now, so this HD might be close to

EOL.

Regards,

Jan


Its not a matter of being able to create partitions you described..
There
may be
a problem if your PC uses a restore disc, and requires the active
partition
be
on the locally connected hard drive connected to the mainboard.



Dave,

Got the system up and running fine now.

SeaTools reported both the primary 10 GB and the secondary 120 GB fine
and using FAT32. The problem turned out that I tried to be smart and
avoid potential motherboead BIOS limitations by using a separate Ultra
ATA-100 controller for the 120 GB disk. With all the other goodies
installed in this DELL Computer, it was a "maximized" machine when I
bought it some six years ago, there were device conflicts between the
Promise TX2 driver and other stuff.
Since I don't have the competence, without reding a lot, to juggle
around with IRQs etc., I decided to try to remove the Promise controller
card and install the 120 GB HD as secondary to the middle connector,
using cable select, to the cable from the motherboard IDE connector.

I restored the system settings to the morning before I started this
whole adventure (thank God my LifeSaver was still running in there), and
then took out the controller.

And.... it worked quite ok.

Good thing it that I learnt a lot, and thanks for all advice, Dave.

I will stick to the KISS rule from now on.


Jan

Glad you got it working. Just one caution here, you obviously installed the
bios extender. In the future if you modify the master boot record on the
first drive, or try to remove the second drive for use in another computer,
you won't be able to recover the data easily from the second hard drive. In
fact, it will be unreadable.

This is a recap of some of the other advice given along with some of my own.

First, try partitioning the drive as Dave recommended--a large extended
partition containing several logical partitions. You can use this
partitioning program free for 30 days:

BootIt Next Generation is available from: http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/
and it does partitioning, makes a compressed image, does many other
partitioning chores and is a boot manager. It is not quite as easy to use
as Partition Magic but it is half the cost and has more features. Unlike
the crippled PMagic demo, BING is a *full function* demo you can try for
FREE for 30 days. The web site has a lot of support articles.

Second, pull the Promise card and slave the drive up to either the old hard
drive or one of the other Ide drives. Dell uses cable select and the slave
position on the ribbon cable is the middle connector. Make sure the jumper
pins are correct. Check the BIOS to make sure all the drives are correctly
recognized.

If you continue to have a boot problem, try slaving the new drive to a
different device. Only if all else fails should you introduce the Promise
card into the mix as it might be causing complications. I used an early
Promise card and the directions for installing it were wrong. It would not
work until I got tech support to walk me through the installation which was
quite different from their printed instructions. I am not saying this is
the cause of your problem but simple is often better when dealing with
computer issues.

--
Regards

Ron Badour, MS MVP for W98
Tips: http://home.satx.rr.com/badour
Knowledge Base Info:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?pr=kbinfo

"Jan Flodin" wrote in message
...
Thought I had investigated what had to be done, but unfortunately I am
now stuck.

In short, I have put in a second hard disk with its own controller card.
The computer sees the disk ok, partionioning the disk made win98 see the
disk and its capacity ok. Formatting the disk went ok, but win98 seem
not to work after this second hard disk was formatted.

Details:

My daughter has my old DELL Dimension XPS R450 with Win 98 and 10 GB
Hard Disk, and today I put in a second 120 GB ATA-100 disk (Seagate) as
slave, connected to a separate PCI ATA-100 controller card from Promise.
I learnt that with its own controller card, the computer would recognize
the full capacity of this relatively large disk, thus avoiding possible
BIOS limitations in the R450.

Physical installation went fine, thanks to good manuals from DELL,
Seagate and Promise. At startup, the Promise BIOS saw the Seagate 120 GB
HD as it should. And win 98 started and saw, as it should now, only the
10 GB (C boot HD.

After some confusion why the fdisk did not see the full capacity of the
120 GB disk, I learnt to install a MS fix to make Win 98 fdisk to
recognize large disks. After some failures running fdisk under win98
from a DOS window, I restarted Win 98 in DOS mode, and managed to use
fdisk to create a full partition on the 120 GB second disk (reported
some 115 GB capacity when done).

After reboot, win 98 started normally and the My Computer Window now saw
both C: (the old 10 GB boot HD) and D: (the new 120 GB HD). I first
tried to do a format on D: from the Win 98 GUI, but after an endless
wait I realized that the format had stopped and crashed. After a reboot
to Win 98 DOS mode, I issued the DOS command FORMAT D: , and the format
worked. Even if the numbers reported at the start was wrong, the end
result reported by format was some 115 GB.

I felt relief that I eventually succeeded, closed win98 and restarted
the computer....

Total chaos, the computer startup went extremely slow, and this first
attempt throw me into Safe Mode. I decided to do a new startup. It went
extremely slow, but eventually, maybe after 10-20 minutes, win98 showed.
Everything i tried in windows took ages to respond. I had to leave
for home this evening after clicking on the "My Computer" to see if it
opens up and shows the hard disks. My hope is that this is something
win98 has to go through once to learn something for the registry or
whatever. I asked my daughter to leave the computer for the night to see
if it gets through this, but I have little hope. The mouse is moving but
other things react extremely slow.

So, what have I done wrong and what to do about it? I find no clues
using Google.

To summarize, the computer seems to recognize the new second 120 GM hard
disk ok. After fdisk, win 98 saw the new D: ok and that it was 115 GB.

After format D: from DOS mode, win98 seems to not cope with this new
hard disk and cannot run, maybe extremely, extremely, slow.

My only option right now is to disconnect the new hard drive and pull
out the ATA-100 controller card, and hope that everything goes back to
where it was before I started this operation.


Jan

Lil' Dave wrote:
"Jan Flodin" wrote in message
...

Lil' Dave wrote:

"Jan Flodin" wrote in message
...


Lil' Dave wrote:


"Jan Flodin" wrote in message
. ..



Thought I had investigated what had to be done, but unfortunately I am
now stuck.

In short, I have put in a second hard disk with its own controller

card.

The computer sees the disk ok, partionioning the disk made win98 see

the

disk and its capacity ok. Formatting the disk went ok, but win98 seem
not to work after this second hard disk was formatted.

Details:

My daughter has my old DELL Dimension XPS R450 with Win 98 and 10 GB
Hard Disk, and today I put in a second 120 GB ATA-100 disk (Seagate)

as

slave, connected to a separate PCI ATA-100 controller card from

Promise.

I learnt that with its own controller card, the computer would

recognize

the full capacity of this relatively large disk, thus avoiding

possible

BIOS limitations in the R450.

Physical installation went fine, thanks to good manuals from DELL,
Seagate and Promise. At startup, the Promise BIOS saw the Seagate 120

GB

HD as it should. And win 98 started and saw, as it should now, only

the

10 GB (C boot HD.

After some confusion why the fdisk did not see the full capacity of

the

120 GB disk, I learnt to install a MS fix to make Win 98 fdisk to
recognize large disks. After some failures running fdisk under win98

from a DOS window, I restarted Win 98 in DOS mode, and managed to use


fdisk to create a full partition on the 120 GB second disk (reported
some 115 GB capacity when done).

After reboot, win 98 started normally and the My Computer Window now

saw

both C: (the old 10 GB boot HD) and D: (the new 120 GB HD). I first
tried to do a format on D: from the Win 98 GUI, but after an endless
wait I realized that the format had stopped and crashed. After a

reboot

to Win 98 DOS mode, I issued the DOS command FORMAT D: , and the

format

worked. Even if the numbers reported at the start was wrong, the end
result reported by format was some 115 GB.

I felt relief that I eventually succeeded, closed win98 and restarted
the computer....

Total chaos, the computer startup went extremely slow, and this first
attempt throw me into Safe Mode. I decided to do a new startup. It

went

extremely slow, but eventually, maybe after 10-20 minutes, win98

showed.

Everything i tried in windows took ages to respond. I had to leave
for home this evening after clicking on the "My Computer" to see if it
opens up and shows the hard disks. My hope is that this is something
win98 has to go through once to learn something for the registry or
whatever. I asked my daughter to leave the computer for the night to

see

if it gets through this, but I have little hope. The mouse is moving

but

other things react extremely slow.

So, what have I done wrong and what to do about it? I find no clues
using Google.

To summarize, the computer seems to recognize the new second 120 GM

hard

disk ok. After fdisk, win 98 saw the new D: ok and that it was 115 GB.

After format D: from DOS mode, win98 seems to not cope with this new
hard disk and cannot run, maybe extremely, extremely, slow.

My only option right now is to disconnect the new hard drive and pull
out the ATA-100 controller card, and hope that everything goes back to
where it was before I started this operation.


Jan


You provided mostly throrough information. However, I saw no mention

of

the


software drive installation for the Promise controller for the windows
environment. Am assuming you did not install it. This would cause

slow

drive access in windows. Secondly, the Promise ATA 100 controller has

not


been manufactured by Promise for a couple of years. Even though the

hard


drive appears to show the correct capacity, the controller was only

designed


to work with hard drives up to 80GB. So this itself may be a problem.

If


you're referring to the current TX2 version, there should be no

problem,

but


the driver for windows is still required for full speed operation.

I would not make any partition in excess of 64GB with even the latest

fdisk


And, unless I was creating a duplicate copy of the boot partition of

the

other hard drive, I would partition the 120GB drive as one extended
partition with multiple logical drives. And, I would not be using

fdisk

at


all, rather, some later partitioning and formatting tool that can

handle

any


late hard drive capacity. Such is available from the hard drive's
manufacturer, usually, their website.
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/...s/discwiz.html
DO NOT INSTALL THE BIOS EXTENDER.

Finally, there is no first or initial 120GB hard drive. So, there

cannot

be


second 120GB hard drive. You have 2 hard drives, not two 120GB hard

drives


per your subject line and text indications. Reading the post shows
otherwise, so this leaves the reader wondering where the first 120GB

hard


drive is.




Dave,

Thank you for your very constructive advice, which I will try to follow
it tomorrow when I will try again to resolve the situation. I did indeed
install the driver that came on the diskette from Promise, and I recall
TX2 was in the name string that appears when the controller card boots
up and reports about 115 GB on that second hard disk. The first disk,
that came installed in the XPS R450 when it was new, is 10 GB and is the
bootable disk, (C, connected to a connector on the system board. My
subject line was confusing, I admit. The first hard disk is 10 GB, the
second (the one I am trying to install) is 120 GB. I have to realize
English is not my native tounge and think twice before I write...

I will check, in safe mode, that the Promise driver is still there and
also try to check the hard drive to see what it reports. I did, with
fdisk (I could not get disc wizard, that I downloaded from Seagate, to
find my new hard disk despite that I reported the correct model number
to it, as reported from the controller card during boot up) create one
single DOS primary partition, as large as possible, giving some 115 GB.



The Promise driver may be there in safe mode, but it won't be working.
If you're trying to do all this partitioning in windows or its safe

mode,

stop.
Download the boot diskette version of Seagate's tools. Use that.



One question: If I get this up and running, could I partition with one
10 GB DOS primary partition and the rest as, as you suggest, one
extended partition with logical drives? If I later take out the old 10GB
HD and use just this 120 GB disk, could I set its primary partition to
active, change the jumper settings on the HD so this 120 GB HD becomes
master, still using the promise controller card and leave the IDE
connector on the system board empty? And reinstall win98 on this new HDs
primary and active partition? After all, this DELL XPS R450 has been
used frequently during some six years now, so this HD might be close to

EOL.


Regards,

Jan


Its not a matter of being able to create partitions you described..

There

may be
a problem if your PC uses a restore disc, and requires the active

partition

be
on the locally connected hard drive connected to the mainboard.



Dave,

Got the system up and running fine now.

SeaTools reported both the primary 10 GB and the secondary 120 GB fine
and using FAT32. The problem turned out that I tried to be smart and
avoid potential motherboead BIOS limitations by using a separate Ultra
ATA-100 controller for the 120 GB disk. With all the other goodies
installed in this DELL Computer, it was a "maximized" machine when I
bought it some six years ago, there were device conflicts between the
Promise TX2 driver and other stuff.
Since I don't have the competence, without reding a lot, to juggle
around with IRQs etc., I decided to try to remove the Promise controller
card and install the 120 GB HD as secondary to the middle connector,
using cable select, to the cable from the motherboard IDE connector.

I restored the system settings to the morning before I started this
whole adventure (thank God my LifeSaver was still running in there), and
then took out the controller.

And.... it worked quite ok.

Good thing it that I learnt a lot, and thanks for all advice, Dave.

I will stick to the KISS rule from now on.


Jan


Glad you got it working. Just one caution here, you obviously installed the
bios extender. In the future if you modify the master boot record on the
first drive, or try to remove the second drive for use in another computer,
you won't be able to recover the data easily from the second hard drive. In
fact, it will be unreadable.


Dave,

Thanks for the info. I have not intentionally installed any BIOS
extender and cannot see what tool I have used that did it without my
consent. But I will no more be sure of anything.... The SeaTools did not
report anything about BIOS overlay or extension. I thought that the BIOS
in the machine simply was already capable of handling 120+ GB ( I guess
maybe up to 127 GB?). But, I will try to check this next time I visit my
daughter.

Regards

Jan