Hard drive
- Thread starter BluesFan
- Start date
If you pull a hard drive out of an old case it would have to be slaved to another current OSed drive used as the primary. With the drive still not accessible there are data recovery tools as well as Live for cd Linux distros like Knoppix and ubuntu for saving files by using one of those as the go between. Linux can readily access different partition types while MS sees problems between versions at times. What version of Windows are you running now and what type of partition is on the old drive?
If the old drive is an ATA66 type or simply a bare drive you won't see anything on it. To see if anything is on the drive having been previously partitioned and formatted you would have to set it up as a slave to the drive you unplugged if still working and see what the disk management tool shows. If a bare drive you will see a total amount of "unallocated" drive space showing that the drive will need to be partitioned and formatted in order to be usable. The XP installer can also be used to create a new primary when booting up from that. Once slaved to the other drive if you are not going to install Windows on it you would use the disk management tool to see it formatted with the new NTFS partition.
elitehacker
New Member
Do you have an operating system on that drive? does that error message flash up during bootup?
Any version of Windows before ME wouldn't load on a system with more then 512mb of ram to start with. With a corrupted boot sector or even a dos drive something should be seen. A bare drive will leave it blank for sure. Know anyone with a Linux live for cd distro? You simply boot from the live cd and it will clearly show if anythind is there to begin with.
If the drive is too old it will be unusable since newer boards require at least an ATA100 not ATA66 or as old as ATA33 drive. A newer ATA100 or ATA133 would be backward compatible to replace a failed drive on an old board. But it's like taking an old 16mb ISA video card and trying to run it in a PCI-E slot. It may simply be "too old" period. You would need to know the specifications on that model Packard to see what it supported and if the hard drive was less then the current ATA100-133 standard for ide drives. Or it could simply be d.. o... a..?
Thats not true, the 512 limit was fixed with 98se, theres even a patch for 98, I have run amany 98 with a 1gb of ram!
You need to connect your drive back up and hook the (old) drive up as a slave drive and access it through MY Computer after you boot up.
Oh reeeeeeeeeallly?
The fix for 98SE was to edit the autoexec.bat file to change the MaxPhysPage value seen in 386ENH section from 30,000 to a higher figure like 50,000. The other work around for the memory limitation seen IN 98SE as well in the entire 9X-ME family of Windows goes as follows.SYMPTOMS
If your computer has 1 gigabyte (GB) or more of random-access memory (RAM) installed, Windows may not start. Also, when you try to start your computer, you may receive the following error message:
Insufficient memory to initialize Windows.
Quit one or more memory-resident programs or remove unnecessary utilities from your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files, and restart your computer.
This behavior may also occur during Windows Setup, or when you try to start Windows for the first time.
RESOLUTION
To work around this issue, add the following line to the [386enh] section of the System.ini file:
MaxPhysPage=30000
This limits the amount of physical RAM that Windows can access to 768 MB. To do so, use the following steps:
Use any text editor (such as Notepad) to edit the System.ini file.
Add the following line in the [386Enh] section of the file
MaxPhysPage=30000
Save the file, and then restart your computer.
If this problem occurs during Windows Setup, use the following steps to resolve the issue:
Restart your computer. When you see the "Starting Windows 95" message, press the F8 key, and then choose Command Prompt Only from the Startup menu.
For Windows 98, restart your computer, press and hold down the CTRL key until the Startup menu appears, and then choose Command Prompt Only.
Change to the folder into which you are attempting to install Windows.
Edit the System.ini file. To do so, type edit system.ini , and then press ENTER.
Add the following line in the [386Enh] section of the file
MaxPhysPage=30000
Save the file, and then restart your computer. Windows Setup should continue.
98SE won't even install onto a system with more then 512mb since the installer will lock right up until one of these workarounds is used. If the current board had 98 drivers available I would have still had a partition ofr 98SE running until Vista came out. That would have been sharing the second drive with XP Pro or Linux there.
Windows 98se or ME will install with 1gb of memory, after you install it if you want to do your Vcache fix thats fine, but you have to have more than 1gb to cause the install to freeze.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=http%3A//support.microsoft.com%3A80/support/kb/articles/Q304/9/43.ASP&NoWebContent=1
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=http%3A//support.microsoft.com%3A80/support/kb/articles/Q304/9/43.ASP&NoWebContent=1
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Theres jumpers on the back of the drive, it should be marked to what jumper to use
The trick to keep the 98SE installer from locking up is to enter that MaxPhysPage= 50000 in the 386ENH section found in the autoexec,bat file by first using the SYS C: command and manually editing the dos file to enter that in. Once WIN 98SE was up and running you could then go in and manually edit the system.ini file. At one time I could do that in my sleep since I was correcting eveyone else's problems.
I think he's trying to boot off that drive. It probably doesn't have an OS, or the OS just isn't compatible with your hardware, etc. The best idea which was already said, it to connect it as an extra, or slave drive and boot into WinXP and access it, and format it, most likely.
If it's an ATA100 and not an older ATA66 drive you can easily use it as a pare drive for storage uness you are planning to dual boot two versions of Windows or Windows with Linux. As far as it having 95, 98, or ME on it you would want to start off with a fresh partition in order to put it to use in your current build. Then you can put whatever you want on it.
Is this it if so Jumper J20-(Master on)-(Slave off)
I would like to see what is on it first. But I'm not sure how to. I've been looking on the net and found out it is only a 2 gb drive so I'm probably wasting my time. But I need to learn some how.
On the drive it says jumper j20, master/single on, slave off. I don't see any pins that I can easily identify as jumpers. And I'm not sure what "jumper j20" means.
On the drive it says jumper j20, master/single on, slave off. I don't see any pins that I can easily identify as jumpers. And I'm not sure what "jumper j20" means.