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Hard drive FAT32
- Thread starter bobsalas
- Start date
It should have little problem reading a 15GB drive, and whether its Fat32 or NTFS is irrelevant, as that is dependent on the OS not the hardware. Does the BIOS pick it up as anything? If its not getting picked up, it may have bit the dust along with the Motherboard.
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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.
- Thread starter
- #3
This HD was my boot drive with XP.
The little P2 233 is running Win 2000.
At start up, BIOS does not see this HD. I thought it was too big fro the MB or Win 2000.
The funny thing is that when my PC died it would go through start up and then the monitor never fired up. It would read the video card. That is, if I unplugged it from the PC I would get the error message on the screen that there was no PC connected.
Waht made me think it was the CPU or MB was that I kept getting a overheating shutdown message from BIOS. MY fan was caked with dust and so I replaced it and after replacing the fan the PC never turned on again.
Could it be the HD failed, after all?
The little P2 233 is running Win 2000.
At start up, BIOS does not see this HD. I thought it was too big fro the MB or Win 2000.
The funny thing is that when my PC died it would go through start up and then the monitor never fired up. It would read the video card. That is, if I unplugged it from the PC I would get the error message on the screen that there was no PC connected.
Waht made me think it was the CPU or MB was that I kept getting a overheating shutdown message from BIOS. MY fan was caked with dust and so I replaced it and after replacing the fan the PC never turned on again.
Could it be the HD failed, after all?
There a good possibility.
Does it spin when the PC is turned on? does it make any sounds? Anything other than a mild humming is a dead ringer for damage.
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.
Does it spin when the PC is turned on? does it make any sounds? Anything other than a mild humming is a dead ringer for damage.
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.
- Thread starter
- #5
It wouldn't serve you well to pump any money into this old system. However, the power supply should be tested/replaced before you even consider replacing the mobo and CPU.
In addition, older Pentiums (particularly all Pentium I's and some Pentium II's) may have trouble reading larger hard drives. The BIOS is the limiting factor here. On my old Pentium I board, I had to flash the BIOS to a newer version in order for it to see a 20GB drive. Before, it was limited to 8GB.
Even with a BIOS flash, you will likely be capped around 32GB, which is the next obstacle that affected a lot of older BIOS's.
~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884
In addition, older Pentiums (particularly all Pentium I's and some Pentium II's) may have trouble reading larger hard drives. The BIOS is the limiting factor here. On my old Pentium I board, I had to flash the BIOS to a newer version in order for it to see a 20GB drive. Before, it was limited to 8GB.
Even with a BIOS flash, you will likely be capped around 32GB, which is the next obstacle that affected a lot of older BIOS's.
~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884
Here's one thing you could try, if you think it could possibly be a bad hard drive: try taking the hard drive from your old pc, and running it in the newer one. If it's the hard drive, you may be able to boot with the old hard drive, and then possibly get the newer hard drive to spin up as a secondary drive, and then copy any important files off of that drive onto CDs or DVDs or perhaps another hard drive..
As for the size limitations, it would be worth doing some searching around on the web for any info specific to your motherboard (if custom built) or desktop machine model number (if from an OEM like Dell, IBM, Compaq, HP, Gateway). You may find, as cdogg mentioned, that your old machine will need a BIOS flash in order to read even the slighly larger hard drive. At the time those were likely manufactured, a 15 gig hard drive was a HUGE increase from a 6 gig hard drive, of course! So, it is very possible. It usually depends upon the particular motherboard as to how large a hard drive, how much memory, etc, a system can handle. You could have the exact same processor in 2 different motherboards, and have totally different results with hard drive and memory limits.
Another option would be to try swapping out the IDE cables in one of the machines, if you know where an extra is. Also, you could try hooking up the 15 gigabyte hard drive on your older PC as a secondary drive, and your 6 gig drive as the primary, and see if it will still boot into Windows 2000, and then possibly see the 15 gig as an extra hard drive. I have had a hard drive or two before that couldn't be booted, but could be seen for extra storage - at least enough to back the data off of those drives for recovery.
And, of course, some easily overlookable thoughts with hard drives, when you're moving stuff around, that sounds simple and impossible to forget, but it's easy to do:
1. Make sure you did connect both the IDE and power cable to the hard drive, and the other end of the IDE cable IS securely connected to the motherboard/mainboard. It's super easy to forget to connect one wire, when you're frustrated, and/or moving different parts around between machines.
2. Check the jumper settings on each hard drive. If you want to use one as the primary, make sure the jumper is set to "master", and the secondary is set to "slave." This is, of course, assuming you put them on the same IDE cable. If you use separate cables, with no other drives attached on each cable, each jumper should be set to either:
1. Master
2. Master with no slave attached (if this option is available)
3. Or, you can just set it to CS (cable select) at times. But, when trouble shooting, I'd stick with setting each drive exactly to what is desired, at least at first.
hth
--
"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me
As for the size limitations, it would be worth doing some searching around on the web for any info specific to your motherboard (if custom built) or desktop machine model number (if from an OEM like Dell, IBM, Compaq, HP, Gateway). You may find, as cdogg mentioned, that your old machine will need a BIOS flash in order to read even the slighly larger hard drive. At the time those were likely manufactured, a 15 gig hard drive was a HUGE increase from a 6 gig hard drive, of course! So, it is very possible. It usually depends upon the particular motherboard as to how large a hard drive, how much memory, etc, a system can handle. You could have the exact same processor in 2 different motherboards, and have totally different results with hard drive and memory limits.
Another option would be to try swapping out the IDE cables in one of the machines, if you know where an extra is. Also, you could try hooking up the 15 gigabyte hard drive on your older PC as a secondary drive, and your 6 gig drive as the primary, and see if it will still boot into Windows 2000, and then possibly see the 15 gig as an extra hard drive. I have had a hard drive or two before that couldn't be booted, but could be seen for extra storage - at least enough to back the data off of those drives for recovery.
And, of course, some easily overlookable thoughts with hard drives, when you're moving stuff around, that sounds simple and impossible to forget, but it's easy to do:
1. Make sure you did connect both the IDE and power cable to the hard drive, and the other end of the IDE cable IS securely connected to the motherboard/mainboard. It's super easy to forget to connect one wire, when you're frustrated, and/or moving different parts around between machines.
2. Check the jumper settings on each hard drive. If you want to use one as the primary, make sure the jumper is set to "master", and the secondary is set to "slave." This is, of course, assuming you put them on the same IDE cable. If you use separate cables, with no other drives attached on each cable, each jumper should be set to either:
1. Master
2. Master with no slave attached (if this option is available)
3. Or, you can just set it to CS (cable select) at times. But, when trouble shooting, I'd stick with setting each drive exactly to what is desired, at least at first.
hth
--
"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me
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