How to read harddrive that was once too big for mobo.

February 16, 2008

How to read harddrive that was once too big for mobo?

I have a hard drive that was too big for the mobo that I first used it

on. I think it is 800 Meg (but I'll check again if it matters) and

when I bought it, I think Western Digital had a remapping program that

allowed the drive to pretent to the mobo that its geometry was

different from reality.

I tried connecting it as a slave, setting the jumpers correctly, and

iirc, it wasn't recognized at all. I bought an enclosure and hooked

it up to the USB port, and although the computer seees the enclosure

and installs or loads the HDUSB stuff, the drive never shows up on any

drive list.

Conecting it as a master drive has its own problems, which see below,

and furthermore, I have another drive from the same persion which was

never a master drive and doesn't have an OS on it. So I can't connect

it as the master drive. Wot should I do?

I have a Promise card that would have iiuc enabled me to run these

drives without the remapping software that it uses, but wouldn't the

remapping software still run since it is there, regardless of whether

it is plugged into the new, powerful mobo, or the Promise card?

When I was using this drive as my master drive, when the computer

booted up, just after the very beginning of start-up, a white box with

blue text, or something, displayed, giving notice that this software

was running.

Now I have a newer mobo and much bigger hd's, but I want to get some

data off of this HD. I tried last October, and iirc I couldn't use it

as a slave drive. So I used it as the master and made my primary a

slave. It gave all kinds of warnings at the start that convinced me

it wouldn't start, but somehow it did, and I got the data I needed

then. However after I shut down, and removed the drive, and reset my

real drive as Single Drive, it wouldn't start. (I was leaving on a

long business trip the next day and had a friend coming in to download

my email, so I was really bothered. ) I controlled my panic and booted

from a floppy, and sys'ed the HD and bingo, it worked again.

How did the old HD un-sys or de-sys or re-sys the newer HD while it

was temporarily a slave? How can I avoid this from happening

altogether.

Thanks a lot.

If you are inclined to email me

for some reason, remove NOPSAM :-)

February 16, 2008

Re: How to read harddrive that was once too big for mobo.

When the old drive was the master, it was installing drive management

software as part of the boot process. This software should be specific to

each drive - that is, it was needed for that old drive (and the fact that it

wasn't being installed was the reason that your couldn't access the content

when it was a slave) but it shouldn't be needed for the new drive. But,

from your description, it seems that the system decided that the management

software was also needed for the new drive when it was a slave, and

configured the drive accordingly. As it wasn't configured as a boot drive,

when you changed things back you had a drive configured to use the

management software, but that software wasn't being loaded. By SYSing it

again you removed this configuration and made is accessible as a non-managed

drive.

--

Jeff Richards

MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User)

"mm" <NOPSAMmm2005@bigfoot.com> wrote in message

news:0v8cr3p16472160udvu81ue44mcus7usu5@4ax.com...

> How to read harddrive that was once too big for mobo?

>

> I have a hard drive that was too big for the mobo that I first used it

> on. I think it is 800 Meg (but I'll check again if it matters) and

> when I bought it, I think Western Digital had a remapping program that

> allowed the drive to pretent to the mobo that its geometry was

> different from reality.

>

> I tried connecting it as a slave, setting the jumpers correctly, and

> iirc, it wasn't recognized at all. I bought an enclosure and hooked

> it up to the USB port, and although the computer seees the enclosure

> and installs or loads the HDUSB stuff, the drive never shows up on any

> drive list.

>

> Conecting it as a master drive has its own problems, which see below,

> and furthermore, I have another drive from the same persion which was

> never a master drive and doesn't have an OS on it. So I can't connect

> it as the master drive. Wot should I do?

>

> I have a Promise card that would have iiuc enabled me to run these

> drives without the remapping software that it uses, but wouldn't the

> remapping software still run since it is there, regardless of whether

> it is plugged into the new, powerful mobo, or the Promise card?

>

> When I was using this drive as my master drive, when the computer

> booted up, just after the very beginning of start-up, a white box with

> blue text, or something, displayed, giving notice that this software

> was running.

>

> Now I have a newer mobo and much bigger hd's, but I want to get some

> data off of this HD. I tried last October, and iirc I couldn't use it

> as a slave drive. So I used it as the master and made my primary a

> slave. It gave all kinds of warnings at the start that convinced me

> it wouldn't start, but somehow it did, and I got the data I needed

> then. However after I shut down, and removed the drive, and reset my

> real drive as Single Drive, it wouldn't start. (I was leaving on a

> long business trip the next day and had a friend coming in to download

> my email, so I was really bothered. ) I controlled my panic and booted

> from a floppy, and sys'ed the HD and bingo, it worked again.

>

> How did the old HD un-sys or de-sys or re-sys the newer HD while it

> was temporarily a slave? How can I avoid this from happening

> altogether.

>

> Thanks a lot.

>

> If you are inclined to email me

> for some reason, remove NOPSAM :-)

February 16, 2008