I've just bought a 80 gig Western Digital drive, but whatever way I install/format it under win98 (dos fdisk, custom tools, whatever) I can't get it to report more than 32 gig. Anyone got an idea how to make it possible to use the full 80 gig (without upgrading to win2k)?

Another question about flashin the bios; anyone got some good resources on this? All the pages I found told me to get an update from my computer manufacturer, which is kinda hard since they don't exist anymore :(

Hmm, I could be that Win98 can only reconize up to 32GB?
ie, when 98 came out, 5 GB was a large HDD, so...

Try updating your BIOS, if no update is available or that doesn't fix your problem you may need to buy a newer motherboard. I think that the amount of addressible data on an IDE device is dependant on either the chipset or the BIOS, but I am not sure. I would ask at www.forumoc.com, somebody there would definately know.

At least the Linux kernel has no problem with older BIOS and large hard drives since the BIOS isn't used to to access the disk. Windows should do direct access to the IDE controller as well (or it would be sloooowwww).

Try getting a GNU/Linux rescue disk (BBCLinux works well) and then partition and format it there (mkfatfs) instead of DOS. MSDOS is probably using the BIOS to access the drive, but Windows shouldn't.

I'll look into the linux thingy (if/when I can get my hands on a boot disk for it :)... Since there isn't any data on the drive I can play around with it.

Talking of the bios, WD suggest that one downlods their tools and installs something called EZ-bios on the drive. Supposedly that should fix the problems, but (obviously) it didn't :(

Oh, well, I did the unthinkable and contacted WD support. Maybe they suprise me and solve the problem... probably not :/

(haven't had very good experiences with tech-support in the past, so...)

Very familiar problem. Many moons ago I had a 4Gb HD that refused to work any longer in my pentium, so I replaced it with an nice 20Gb disk. No problems there, but I still had several hunderds of mb of data on that HD I liked to keep and the only other computer I had around was a 486. And 486 bios' can't handle such 'big' HDs.
It didn't take much trouble finding the EZ-bios thingy, unfortunatly it requires the drive to be formated, and that was out of the question. Luckely I found out about Linux single disk distributions. Downloaded one and put it on a disk and booted the 486 with it and presto: no trouble using the HD anymore.
After copying the data I formated the drive and installed the EZ-Bios program and since then the HD is still working happely in the 486.

How is the ez-bios thingy supposed to work? I mean, I can boot if I set the jumper-configuration to some alternative setting which causes the drive to report less drive space (ie. 32gb) to the bios so it can boot. I can then install the ez-bios, but am I then supposed to set reset the default jumper configuration, or what?

*back to playing around then*

AFAIK It's a program placed in the bootsector of the HD, it runs in the background and corrects the HD adressing. Once it's installed, you should leave the HD bios settings unchanged.

It offsets data on the drive by 63 blocks. I accidentally put it on my drive when I formatted it (bad idea). From what I can tell, it replaces the BIOS drive access interrupts with its own procedures (the Linux kernel does this too).

Oh no! I just wrote a big message but clicked the Reset button instead of Post!!! Is there any good reason to have a Reset button!?!?!?

To annoy people who are apt to clicking it. :)

... let me remember what I typed before...

EZ-BIOS and all other real-mode BIOS overlays are EVIL. They result in very poor performance. You should uninstall EZ-BIOS right away.

Probably your best bet is to boot into Windows and run the MS-DOS Prompt from inside Windows. Run the fdisk program and see how big of a partition it reports. If it reports the full 78GB then go ahead and make the partition, reboot, and then format it by right-clicking the drive in My Computer and choosing Format from the popup menu. If fdisk cannot see the whole 78GB, then you need to somehow make the BIOS ignore the drive. Try setting the Secondary Master (or whichever channel the drive is on) to NONE. Windows has its own IDE drivers so it should talk directly to the IDE controller and find the drive.

None I can think of...ie, CTRL+A and a simple back space should be sufficient. (^_^)
Mmm, don't feel bad..I'v done similer thigns with emails...

Is this your only drive? If you have another drive install the OS on that, then run Partition Magic Pro on the 80gb, make 2gb partition for the OS and then I would recommend splitting the remaining 74gb in half, one for programs, the other for data (IE. MP3s, movies, pictures, etc). The reason you want to partition into smaller segments is so that the entire drive doesn't have to be scanned to access any given file. The most performance critical disk access is that of the operating system, and with the OS on its own 2gb partition it saves it from having to seek over 74gb of data to find what it is looking for.

I'll try installing it as a secondary drive then and format it from windows when I get back from school :)

Hmm, got it working now, thanks everyone!