First, see if the board manufacturer has updated biod for the mother
board.  It will likely cure the problem

Second, you can usually set jumpers on the hard drive which will make it
appear to have the correct maximum space the bios will accept (32GB
usually) .  This usually results in faster HD access than a softwre patch.

Third, if that didn't work, you can use a software utility to make the
computer see the full hard drive after boot up.  See your HD
manufacturer for such software.

Sometimes the second and third options require either a small partition
in the front of the drive, or a seperate, smaller hd to boot up before
it can load the software nad see the other HD.  You can accomplish the
same thing with a boot-up floppy available from some manufacturers, or
creatable in said software.  Also note that you may be able to hard code
in the heads, cylinders, sectors, etc into BIOS.  These will have to be
for a smaller drive, but it may allow you to boot up to a smaller
partition on the big drive, and once the software is loaded it doesn't
matter what bios thinks about the drive.

Lastly, if you can hard code the bios or somehow trick it into thinking
the hard drive is smaller than it is, and boot up to a smaller
partition, you may be able to load windows 2000 or XP on it.  Windows
bypasses bios for nearly everything, so as long as it recognizes your
IDE controller's chipset, it will drive it directly and may see the
whole hard drive.

Oh, you can also get an IDE controller card which let you use the larger
HD on the older motherboard.  This may work where the limitation of the
drive size is not in the bios, but in the IDE controller itself.

Usually the motherboard manufacturer is helpful in telling you which
method will work best for their board.

-Adam

Bala.Chandar@AVENTIS.COM wrote:

>Recently, I bought a Samsung 40GB hard disk to be used in a relatively old
>machine with Pentium I 200MHz CPU. Anticipating some problem with this
>combination, I downloaded the software from Samsung site that enables you to
>use HDDs greater than 2GB.
>
>But I find that the BIOS of the PC does not even recognise the hard disk.
>Now, what are my options?
>
> - Return the hard disk and look for a 20GB or smaller hard disk?
> - Try to upgrade the BIOS if possible (with all the attendant risk factors)?
> - Change the motherboard of the machine and incur the additional expense?
>
>Since the PC belongs to a friend of mine, I would like to solve the problem
>without any additional expenditure.
>
>Would appreciate any tips / suggestions.
>
>Regards,
>Bala
>
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>
>

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