I’ve got an old P1-200 running Win98 sitting around that I wanted to upgrade with a stronger/larger hard-drive, so I went out and bought and 80G drive. However, the old machine can not detect the large drive and doesn’t get past the bios part of the startup sequence. (At least, I’m pretty sure that’s the bios part.)

I’ve heard that if I partition the drive into smaller pieces then the bios will be able to detect the drive and all will be well. Unfortunately, I’m not exactly sure how to do that, although I do have ‘some’ experience running a partition program called: Gnome Partition Editor.

I’ve been told that if I halve the drive into two partitions of about 40G each then it will run.

My queries in summary are as follows:
1) Can the P1 running Win98SE run the larger hard-drive after it’s been partitioned?
2) How do I partition it, preferably using Gnome Partition Editor.
3) Is there anything else I should know?

GParted tutorials here:

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/documentation.php

I'd say it is worth a try.

A P1-200 is not enough information as to locate any particular computer or motherboard for further details.

You might also find the ATA standard is unacceptable to the board.

Your board is most likely not beyond ATA 66.

Thanks for the link.

The motherboard is very old and I realize now that partitioning won't do the trick. Is there any work around short of getting a new motherboard?

I heard that there was some kind of IDE controller card you used to be able to buy that could bypass this problem since the card had it's own bios chip that could read the larger drives, but I don't know anything else about it.

Sure I used to use one on an old PIII system. PCI IDE Controller card.

http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...ontroller+card