Partition An Old Hd

[lynx]

You can have up to 4 primary partitions on a drive.

But Dos-based windows systems (95,98, ME) will only recognise the first primary partition and an extended dos partition.

This is one of the reasons why it is NOT a good idea to use startup disks from Dos-based systems when you have Win2k or XP installed.

[kaiweiler]

both are Western Digital Caviar 2850
853.6mb

[gungrave]

im off home now from school ill take a screen shot of my hard drive partitions and show u.
in a bit guys.

[Virtualbody1234]

WD2850

CYL=1654, HEAD=16, SEC=63

[kaiweiler]

That's what I put in, but then theres also
Pre
Lnd
XL
I have Pre and Lnd set on 0 and XL on "M" and it's not working
Pre and can be any number between -1 and 1023, and Lnd can be between 0 and over 35000 lol
XL can be either M or Y

[Virtualbody1234]

Originally posted by kaiweiler@16 March 2004 - 10:12
That's what I put in, but then theres also
Pre
Lnd
XL
I have Pre and Lnd set on 0 and XL on "M" and it's not working
Pre and can be any number between -1 and 1023, and Lnd can be between 0 and over 35000 lol
XL can be either M or Y

Check the cables. Power and IDE. Is the drives pin 1 connected to pin 1 on the motherboard?

Can you hear if the drive spins?

[kaiweiler]

yes the pins are connected in the right spots, and the drive is spinning

[lynx]

Write PREcompensation doesn't matter on IDE drives, set it to -1 (= OFF).
Again, LaNDing zone is not important with modern drives, set it to 1655, it will be ignored anyway.

Not sure what XL is referring to. Try both settings. It may mean Logical Block Addressing, in which case Y is the setting you want.

Edit: if the board has autodetect, use that.

[Virtualbody1234]

You could try something like killdisk to "erase" the drive before partitioning and formatting.

http://www.killdisk.com/

[lynx]

Just a thought. If it is the only drive on that cable it should NOT be set as master.

WDC drives have a different settings for master and single.

Drives with 6 or 10 pin jumpers:
For master the jumper should be on pins 5&6, for single the jumper should be removed, although you can put it on pins 4&6 or 3&5 for safe keeping.

Drives with 9 pin jumpers:
For master the jumpers should be on pins 7&8 and 5&6, for single the jumpers should be on pins 7&8 and 1&2.

Edit: Jumpers