only sees 2gig of HD - Did all fixes ? Large disk Enabled

[Malkcontent]

HI there,
I'm hoping someone here can help me. My computer does not recognise my hard drive as being larger than 2 gig anymore. I recently formatted my machine as I had a new graphics card ( actually an old graphics card which used to be in it, due to upgrades have now built my old machine back up so I know all is compatible and tested working)
I've read about the enabling large disk support from FDisk , which I did as I always do. then tried formatting but still 2.1. Tried destroying and rebuilding partition. Still doesn't work.
When I use the windows ME boot diskette it tells me there are files missing or corrupted (BTCDROM.sys , ASPI8U2.sys) and that line 29 and 30 in my config.sys file isn't correct.
Now the disc has been remade twice and works perfect in my other computer.
The HD reads as 2 gig in the bios as well.
Again, this is not a new setup, it is all things that have been done before.
The HD is set as primary master, with a cd-rw slave and a cd-rom as secondary master. Nothing has really changed since last time I did this. Except for putting a graphics card that used to be in the mother board back in it due to upgrading my best machine.
Any ideas, or questions of extra detail I can include?

Thanks for looking

[suRoot]

Hi
is this a fresh install of ME? also have you tried to let windows install sort out your partition? i know that Fdisk only suports up to so much, as well as FAT file system also doing not alot.. so what file system are you using? FAT or FAT32??

thanx

[suRoot]

after googling a bit i got This,

The 2.1 GB Barrier

The 2.1 GB barrier is actually two barriers in one, a hardware barrier as well as a software barrier. Let's take a look at these two barriers and the associated problems they create.

The Hardware Barrier
BIOS developers and engineers, in order to solve the 528 MB problem we mentioned earlier, employed different methods to accomplish resolution. One such solution was to take the top 2 bits from the Int 13h head register and use them for bits 11 and 12 of the cylinder count. By doing this, the maximum head value that can be stored in the remaining 6 bits of the head register is 63 (64 heads total). This, however, creates yet another problem as you are about to see.

[img]http://www.dewassoc.com/images/important.gif[/img] Keep in mind, none of the predominant operating systems is use today use this method of translation!

The presumption is that all bits of the head register will define the logical head count. Therefore, in order to properly translate a drive with 4,096 physical cylinders you must divide the cylinder count by four (1,024 logical cylinders) and multiply the head count by four (128 logical heads). But, since some of the early BIOS's used the top two bits of the head register as part of the cylinder count, there is no way in which to define 128 heads. A BIOS that handles drives in this fashion may hang during the system POST process, as the BIOS attempts the "Identify Drive" command and tries to set the CHS values.

The Software Barrier
The software barrier is one directly related to DOS or MS-DOS® partitioning issues which are derived from the File Allocation Table (FAT) that DOS uses to keep track of hard disk space. The FAT is only capable of working with 32,768 bytes per cluster and no more than 65,536 clusters. If you multiply the two numbers together you get the maximum partition size that DOS can use of 2,147,483,648 bytes or 2,048 MB (2,147,483,648 / 1,0242). Hence, the 2,048 MB maximum partition size is the 2.1GB software barrier, and DOS, MS-DOS® and FAT are the culprits.

[img]http://www.dewassoc.com/images/noteicon.gif[/img] Possible Solutions:
This barrier or limitation is most often found in older legacy systems (pre-Pentium® II) such as 286, 386, 486 and early Pentium® I systems. Unless there is a very good reason for retaining these old units, our first recommendation would be to replace the problem system. Here are the recommended solutions.

• If the motherboard and BIOS are still supported by the manufacturer, update the BIOS to a more current version to overcome the 528MB barrier and replace the hard drive.
• Try a drive overlay such as those made available by Maxtor and Western Digital.
• Upgrade or replace the motherboard, processor and memory.
• Replace the problem system.

[img]http://www.dewassoc.com/images/important.gif[/img] As you review the remaining groups of barriers that have arisen as drive capacities increase, please keep the original barriers in mind. You will find this original historical information useful when trying to understand the overall scope of these problems.