Setup up unformatted HDD on Promise IDE controller
 

Hello,
I am new to this forum and apologize for the double post (wrong area). I have an old PC with a bios/chipset that can only see 8.4 gigs. I added a Promise Ultra66 card to get over the 8.4 gig limitation. I have an unformatted Quantum fireball 20 gig drive I want to use with the Promise controller. To partition and format the drive, I tried using a Win98 Startup diskette. After the tools and ramdisk are loaded, the Quantum drive is not visible so I can't fdisk it. Anyone know what the problem is? I sure would appreciate your advice.

Re: Setup up unformatted HDD on Promise IDE controller
 

Quantum sold their hard drive division to Maxtor some time back, and Maxtor now provide support for the drives.


You've gone to extremes buying that controller to sort out your problem, as all you needed was a downloadable software utility to 'break' the drive size barrier imposed by BIOS. The utility you should use is the one provided by Maxtor, which you'll find at:

http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Ma...&downloadID=57

Please read the information on the download page, and all included instructions before you use it.

Re: Setup up unformatted HDD on Promise IDE controller
 

Thanks. If you are referring to EZ-BIOS, a dynamic disk overlay program, yes I have used it for about 2 years now. It tends to make disk access very slow due to the additional translation required and there is, I hear, some risk that the LBA translation may not be standard. If the DDO is corrupted, you lose all the data. A few weeks ago, I removed the DDO from a 13.6 gig drive and put it on a Promise controler (and prayed!). After backing up my data, of course. Well, it worked fine.

Now I want to put a 20 gig HDD on this card without resorting to a cloning program to transfer the OS; I want to do a clean install of Win98SE on this drive. But I can't seem to get it formatted. There is a trick, I'm sure. Just don't know what it is!

Re: Setup up unformatted HDD on Promise IDE controller
 

The utility program you'll find at the link provided is called MaxBlast3, which is a more recent version of the form of software solution you refer to, which I've not heard such problems reported in relation to.

I'm unsure about your hardware solution. If you disable the onboard IDE channels in BIOS setup does the drive then show up? Windows 98 is certainly intended to reside on drive C:

Have you a model number there for your add-in controller?

Re: Setup up unformatted HDD on Promise IDE controller
 

Yes, I used MaxBlast3 to partition the Quantum drive last night by using the on-board IDE controller. MaxBlast reports One FAT32 Partition. I don't know if the size of the partition is determined by what the on-board IDE controller can see (8.4 gig). I then booted to a Win98 startup disk. This created the RAM drive ("C") but the Quantum HDD is not visible so I can't format it. I wonder if MaxBlast3 already took care of the formatting since it reports the FAT32 partition. By the way, MaxBlast3 loads CDROM drivers but the CDROM, which is on the Promise IDE channel 2, is not visible from MaxBlast.

The Promise card is an ULTRA66 card.

My next step is to put the HDD back on the Promise card and see if Win98 startup can see it.

Re: Setup up unformatted HDD on Promise IDE controller
 

From what I can tell, the card can't be used in the way you want to use it. It needs drivers loaded in Windows to work, and can't operate as a boot device.

It would be a better setup anyway to have Windows 98 installed on your smaller drive, and use the new one for storage. You could even move 'My Documents' and your program folders to it, should you choose to do so.

I'd be splitting your 8.4Gb drive into a 2Gb partition for Windows, and a 6Gb partition for programs, and using the new larger drive for data storage.

Re: Setup up unformatted HDD on Promise IDE controller
 

Actually it can be used that way. I have an UltraATA Promise Controller Card, and to make it work I just modified the Windows 98 boot disk by adding the sys file or com file (can't remember which right now) to the boot disk and modifying the autoexec.bat/config.sys files to load the drivers.

Worked just fine. I have used it as the boot source for Windows 98 in a dual boot configuration!

Re: Setup up unformatted HDD on Promise IDE controller
 

Well that's welcome news!

Re: Setup up unformatted HDD on Promise IDE controller
 

In an earlier post in this thread, I mentioned I removed the DDO on a 13.6 gig Win98SE drive and it works fine on the Promise card. It boots fine and I can see the entire 13.6 gigs because the Promise BIOS is not limited by the 8.4 gig barrier. So I know that the Promise card is capable of booting. Also, I did not have to disable the onboard BIOS. I set the primary and secondary master and slaves to AUTO.

I know Windows loads a SCSI controller to operate the Promise card, but at bootup this must not be necessary as these device drivers are loaded only after Windows loads.

I should have menitioned that I have these drives mounted in docking trays so I can swap the entire drive with operating system, data and all. What I want to have is my 20 gig drive operate like my 13.6 gig drive.

By the way, is there a spell check option on this message board?

Re: Setup up unformatted HDD on Promise IDE controller
 

Hello Palladin!
You may have the key I am looking for. Can you look up your modified Win98 boot disk and tell me what I need?