Hardisk installation, need a 'lil help

Hello all,

OK, I'm at wits end. So looking for some suggestions.

I bought a Maxtor 40G hardrive and was going to slave it to my primary. Well I forgot that I had a tape drive slaved to my primary and a CD rewriter slaved to my CD rom...so no available data ports or power plugs.

I had a ton of trouble trying to install it in any postion -- i was unhooking all the other drives trying to find a position that worked. The only one that successfully installed was slave position to my CD Rom drive. I copied over my existing hardrive over to it --- as I was thinking I could then use it as my main drive. I guess I should not have done none of this, as I couldn't actually leave it in that position.

At anyrate, I wanted to istall it as my primary slave, but I kept and still keep getting stuck at boot up....I've tried all the install ware and DOS and Windows bootups..I'm using Win 98 by the way.

This is getting too long, but to cut to the chase, through some nonconventional methods, I finally get to the step to partition and format my new drive via my software that came with the drive...and it tells me that "there was an error reading the root directory b/c there are too many root directory entries" and it kicks me back to A:\ prompt.

What does this mean and how do I correct it? I cannot get my computer to recognize this new drive at all anytime when I boot up in that position, even though I set it up in BIOS..maybe I'm doing it wrong..can anyone give me ideas at all? ...on the root directory issue? I have deleted all the programs and files that I copied over to it from my previous attempt.

If I go through a partioning and setup as a secondary slave...does that eliminate all possiblilites of later changing it to primary or primary slave or reformating, etc....

Thank you..I'm very frustrated

Mark

 

If you can set the drive up too full capacity as secondary slave there is no reason you can't set it up as primary slave.

Disconnect the tape drive, install the maxtor, red stripe to pin1, jumper set to slave. Make sure the primary master is set to master, dual installation, if that option is available.

Once you have it set up, disconnect the primary master just to be safe.

On restart, enter bios, make sure the primary slave drive is set to auto detect or manually detect the new drive. Make sure it shows the correct capacity. If you made changes save and exit after placing a startup disk in the drive per the following

Put a startup disk in the floppy drive, start the machine
Once at the a prompt, type fdisk, answer yes to the lba question

Now use fdisk to delete all partitions on the drive, then use fdisk to recreate the partitions, once done partitioning format all partitions.

If you want to copy the old drive to the new drive You will have to use the installation disk that came with the drive. I am not really up on those as I have never used them.

To do this, after you have the drive partitioned and formatted, shut the machine off again. Reconnect the primary master, boot with the installation disk I believe. It should give you an option to copy the old master drive to the new slave drive.

Once done. you need to shutdown, and rejumper the drives master and slave and it should boot off the new drive.

 

Thanks for the reply Brian.

I think the problem is that I can't get my computer to detect the new drive. I have tried to set it up both manually "user" and "auto"

When I set it up in BIOS manually, and then save/exit/reboot, it hangs up right after detecting my CD Roms..it hangs up and freezes.

If I set it to auto detect...it will not detect in BIOS, or when I boot it up it will hang at -- "Detecting IDE Primary slave.......(F4 to skip)". It hags up at this point...I can't even F4 to skip.

It appears that I have my Primary Master HDD set to master position...and it has had the tape drive as a primary slave for a long time....so don't think thats the issue.

I just can't get my computer to recognize/detect the new hardrive.

Mark

 

It maybe too big for your bios to work with. Older machines have problems with the new larger drives.

The maxblast software you got with the drive should have a program on it to install a bios overlay onto the drive to install it at full capacity.

I have never used it sorry, some others here have though.

Check the software for a readme file to help with it.

 

Sorry not a very good answer above.

Go to www.maxtor.com click on the support link, software and utilities, click on maxblastplus II and read. It tells you how to make a disk

then click on this link on the page
See "Installing your drive with MaxBlast Plus II" Doc #24022 for installation information.

 

Yea, I've found that link and suggestion before...and tried it out...still doesn't help...their overlay is EZ BIOS I think whick I used...the time I did format it, it was recognizing the full 40 gig.

The problem is that my system won't even detect the new hardrive no matter where I plug it in...I think that is maybe the real issue, but I don't know why it is not detecting it...either on Auto or Manual in the BIOS.


Thanks again.

 

You are at the point of having to start all over at the beginning. Do as brian sugested and set the new Maxtor to Primary/Master by the jumpers. No tape drive, only the CD-rom. You said you used the overlay previously so Fdisk will not work. You need to use the EZ bios setup to go back to the beginning and set the new drive as a Primary/Master making it "Acitve" in the process so Windows will recognize it as the drive to boot up with. That Maxtor disk will give you the ability to copy the entire contents of the old drive to the new drive if you want to. During the new drive setup the Maxtor software will let you create partitions as would Fdisk also if you want. There sugested best way to replace an old drive with a new larger one on an older system is to install the new as Pri/Master and the old as Pri/Slave and the EZ bios programs allows you to setup and copy in one easy process. It formats and partitions as you want.

 

Well, my problem is that I cannot boot at all if I hook the new drive in primary master or slave position...it freezes up during boot process...and this is while I am booting from either a Win boot disk or the Maxtor boot disk in drive A:\. How do I solve this and why is this occuring?

Currently the only time I can get a successful boot with the new drive is if it is in the secondary slave position -- which will not suit my needs. In that position, if I try to reformat/partition it, I now get the error..."error reading the root directory b/c there are too many root directory entries". It will then kick me out to A:/ prompt.

What does this error mean, and how do I correct it?

I appreciate the ideas so far...just can't get them to work yet.

Mark

 

Something has gotten corrupt on the root directory apparently.

Pretty strange and I am just guessing here.

I would think maxtor has a low level format program available for download. A low level format will erase everything and set every cluster to zero. This maybe what you will need to do.

Caution, low level formats should not be done on disks that are connected to ata66/100 controllers, but only from std ide controllers.

You may have to connect the drive where it will recognize and run the low level format.

But, wait for some else's opinion, as I said, only a guess

Although I have low level formatted drives without a problem.

Your other option would be to call maxtor, this is a pretty strange error, I have never seen it before.

 

This might help. Try hard setting the bios hard drive for TYPE 1 and then see if you can boot to a floppy to run the Maxtor boot disk. If that doesn't work you will probably need to buy a promise disk controller card that will handle the new drive correctly.