I am facing a problem of harddisk compatibility with my Personal computer at home.
My personal computer is CYrix – 233 MHz CPU based machine bought around Aug-98. My IDE harddisk of 4.3 GB attached to this machine has crashed.
The documentation of my mother board specifies that BIOS could recognize harddisk only upto size of 8.4 GB.
I have tried installing 40 GB harddisk of Samsung on my PC but my BIOS does not auto detect the same. The screen waits there indefinitely without going further.
As presently 8.4 GB harddisk are not available, I need to install either 20 GB or 40 GB harddisk. What is the solution available to me? Specific queries …
1. If my BIOS is not auto detecting harddisk, could I enter parameters for this harddisk manually in the USER mode? Since, it has to operate in LBA mode, what would be the parameters for Seagate and Samsung harddisks of 20 GB and 40 GB size?
2. Is it possible to install 20 GB and 40 GB harddisk without upgrading BIOS of my computer? I believe India does not have facility of upgrading BIOS.
3. Is there any third party software available which can be used as a interface between BIOS and higher level to enable it recognize 20 GB harddisk? Is it available in Shareware?4. Is it possible to use either 20 GB/ 40 GB harddisk as just 8.4 GB harddisk on my machine? What should be the parameters to be entered in BIOS as machine will not detect harddisk.
5. Are there any other solutions?
Thanks & best regards,