joseph marty wrote:
>
> I suspect that your problem is your mobo and BIOS not capable of recognizing such a big drive.  A celeron 360 is an old chip which must still be on the original mobo.  Something that old is going to have a problem with such a big drive.  Western Digital makes a DOS app called EZ Drive that runs with the boot up, and will allow your BIOS to see this drive.  I am not sure it works with drives other than WD's, so if someone else knows of a similar program that for sure works with Maxtor drives, time to check in.  You could go to Maxtor's web page to see if they have such an app.
>
> >
> >I have been trying to get 2 hard drives to be visible to my system.  I have
> >a celeron 360, WinME, 1 20G Maxtor drive and a drive that came with the
> >computer (6 G)...It was suggested by someone on the list that I may have a
> >problem having two drives on the same IDE cable and to have one cable with
> >CD and Hard Drive, the other IDE with CDRW and other HD.  I tried that and
> >was careful with master/slave arrangement.
> >
> >It didn't work...In fact it only gave me my 6G HD (which is really not the
> >drive I need (It doesn't have all of my data on it!)
> >
> >So, I tried to go back to the way it was...I put both CD drives on one IDE
> >and then the two HDs on the other.  Still didn't get back to the way it was.
> >So, I disconnected the HD (6 Gig) that I didn't really want and only had one
> >drive on the IDE.  The drive is a Maxtor and therefore is not what windows
> >thinks is "ATAPI compatible"  (whatever that means.)  I've tried to use the
> >Maxtor boot disk to run fdisk and it will only let me format the disk...(it
> >has over 10 G of stuff on it!).  And, using a WinME boot disk doesn't work
> >because it doesn't find the Maxtor drive ("no fixed disk present" error
> >message.
> >
> >Is there any hope getting all of my drive and the info on the drive back??
> >
>
Maxtor has an installation utility called "MaxBlast". It comes on a
floppy that is included in the retail kits; I don't know that it is
included with OEM sets. If you didn't get a copy, you can probably
download it from their site (www.maxtor.com). It not only handles the
BIOS limitation, but it also provides guidance for installing the drive
for various scenarios such as make new drive master, make new drive
slave, etc. IIRC, you're supposed to run it after the mechanical
installation of the drive has been completed, but before doing any
partitioning or formatting. My experience with it as an installation
tool (three drives) has been very favorable, but I haven't had to use
the overlay so I can't comment on that feature.

There is one thing about the original posting that troubles me: Doesn't
the term "ATAPI compatible" apply only to CD drives? Or is that normal
when the BIOS can't handle the very large drive?
Regards,
Carroll Grigsby

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