Inspiron 6400 BIOS cant detect HDD bigger than 80Gb

dq88

 

 Do you have XP SP2? If not you may need to get it for it to see the whole drive during the install.

Did you clone the existing drive to the new one?

 

Thanks for the feedback.

 

Yes, I am running on XP2.

 

For example, using the disk management tools (under computer management) to set a complete new partition layout in order for me to do a manual partition copy like

- one primary partition (boot active)

- one secondary partiion (logical drive)

 

This will allow the system to detect it as 80gb hard disk only.

Therefore partition copy is totally out of question.

 

Then I try to clone disk to disk in disk using Acronis True Image application.

The application can see the new hard disk as a complete size (120gb / 160gb).

I try 2 options which are

- retain the partition size

- expand proportional to the disk size

 

Even though cloning is successful, but when I swapped the hdd, both option cause the window fail to boot without any error (blue screen)

Due to this, I had to use back the previous hdd.

When booting with the old hdd, I checked again on the clone hdd (120gb/160gb).

Windows detects it as 80gb hdd instead.

I tried to reformat these new hdd (120gb/160gb) under windows.

This will only let me use it as 80gb.

As a result of this, I had to use the hdd manufacturer disk management utility (disk overlay) in order to use it as single partition with full capacity.

 

 

Now I am wondering if the SATA hdd interface is the root cause issue.

I get another IDE interface hdd with the capacity 120gb.

This seems no problem at all.

Even complete re-partition it under disk management tools (under computer management) is without any problem.

Unfortunately, this was not the internal interface built-in in the Inspiron model I had.

 

 

Therefore I am still stuck with the 120gb/160gb SATA interface hdd.

Not sure what's causing your particular problem, but I can tell you it has nothing to do with the drive being an SATA interface. My 6400 came with a 120gig drive and it runs just fine. I'm not sure which BIOS is in it, but I believe it's one version short of being the latest one available.

 

Hmmm. I just checked, and my Inspiron 6400 is running the A14 BIOS, and the 120gig drive it shipped with is a Samsung HM120JI drive.

 

Hi.

 

Thanks for the input.

 

Last question, if I try to re-install completely with the 120/160 gb hdd with XP2 again into a single big partition, how come the bios setup manage to detect both hdd as 80gb hdd instead ?

 

For your information my hdd are as

- 120 (western digital - WD1200BEVS)

- 160 (fujitsu - MHW2160BH)

 

Anything lock the bios from detecting its full capacity ?

The bios reports the size that the hard drive sends to it.  If you have cloned a Media Direct drive, the code in the MBR set the drive on its first boot to report a size just short of that which would allow the computer to overwrite the host protected area (which doesn't exist on the new drive, but that doesn't matter).  The hard drive vendors have tools that will allow you to reset the MAXSIZE value, but so long as you have the Media Direct MBR it will be reset everytime you boot the drive.

 

Study this thread:

 

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?p=956382#post956382

 

In post #27, Dan Goodell does an excellent job of describing the problem.  Other posts in the thread should be helpful in getting your drive set up correctly.

 

Good luck!