Installing a HD on an OLD computer

Obtain Head, cylinders etc info from the HDD sticker or from the manufacturer
put this info manually in to the BIOS settings

Many of the older pc's just aren't capable of handling the larger drives (yes 1.2 gig is large for a pc that had a 340 meg ;). Depending on the hard drive's manufacturer, there is a program to force the pc to recognize it.

For example: Western Digital has a program called "Easy Drive"

These programs force a short upgrade on the pc each time the hard drive tries to load. The program explains how to set your bios settings to get it to handle the drive long enough for Easy drive (or comparable) to convince the pc it can see it.

I suggest going to the site of the manufacturer of the hard drive. The downloads have been free for that type of program and each manufacturer has its own and wants you to use them so you will buy theirdrives anyway.

Good luck!

Use FDISK to partition the drive into samller virtual drives of about 1/2GB. I have this same problem on my old 486 machine, so I have C,D,E drives.

Don

Don't, I repeat Don't partition a 1.2 gig into multiple drives. What a waste.

You need a drive overlay program to overcome the bios restriction of the computer. It tricks the bios and works.

There are several on the market. Drivepro is great but hasn't been revised since 97 and is about 50 bucks but it does a lot more than just overlay.

You can probably find what you need at this site. The have a download for WD that will do the trick. and it's free.
http://emsatechnologies.com/html/disk_managers.html

Ps. Most hd makers have these utilities on their website.

Note: When you install an overlay watch the screen on startup. If you see a message come by that is something like "to boot from a floppy".

Most of the overlay programs store the overlay info on the boot tracks of the hard drive. The machine has to go to the hard drive before going to the floppy. One in particular says to boot from a floppy press the space bar. Then you insert the boot floppy and go on. It's a small price to pay for the convience.

Good Luck Lee

Western Digital has the EZ Bios software that you need so the 486 will see the hard drive this works because I have on my 486 with a 5 gig WD:
http://www2.driverguide.com/uploads/uploads7/10695.html
This link will have to be type in manually.

Ihope this link works.If it does not then do a search at driverguide.com and type in western digital ez bios or any combo of the two and it should bring to the pasted link.
Good Luck

Go to this page on the Western Digital site.
http://www.westerndigital.com/service/ftp/drives.html#dlgtools
You can download all of the diagnostic and installation tools you could want.
Since this is a used drive, I would run the diagnostic as well as the installation programs.
Regards, Chris

I tend to agree with most of the answers on this thread. Unfortunately, older BIOS's won't recognize drives larger then 540 MB. Therefore, entering the numbers manually won't help. Repartitioning the driver into smaller drives would be great but if the BIOS doesn't recognize this then it isn't an option either. DOS (I'm assuming he's running DOS on a 486 with only 340 MB HDD space) will partition a drive up to 2 GIGs so the block you're running into is in the BIOS. The only thing you can do is use a drive overlay (as suggested in the earlier comments) or looking to see if there is a BIOS upgrade available for the BIOS revision your friends computer has. Good luck.

I, too have run an older 486 with a large HDD. There are several ways to format the drive to overcome this limitation but the easist and best way is the disk utility from the drives manufactorer. Since you have a WD drive, their utility is not only free but also will diagnose any problems that you may have on that drive. The drive utility is now called Data Lifeguard(formerly E-Z Drive and has several improvements.You can download it at: http://www.westerndigital.com/service/ftp/drives.html. You will need your OS bootdisk in order to load DOS on the drive but if you don't have it you can download it at bootdisk.com

I, too have run an older 486 with a large HDD. There are several ways to format the drive to overcome this limitation but the easist and best way is the disk utility from the drives manufactorer. Since you have a WD drive, their utility is not only free but also will diagnose any problems that you may have on that drive. The drive utility is now called Data Lifeguard(formerly E-Z Drive and has several improvements.You can download it at: http://www.westerndigital.com/service/ftp/drives.html. You will need your OS bootdisk in order to load DOS on the drive but if you don't have it you can download it at bootdisk.com

OK sorry for the mistake on this, but the drive I bought is a Quantum Fireball 1.2 gig drive. Nevertheless, found the file that you are supposed to use to override the bios stuff. It creates a bootdisk for you to use to install the drive. I triedit out last night on my friends machine, but alas, when I hooked the drive up, I get a hard drive configuration error and it won't boot off the floppy. I made several different attempts to try to get it to boot off the floppy, but the only way I could get it to do so was with the current configuration. I even tried turning the hard drive off completely, but the system would just hang in the boot sequence. Seems like it's a bigger problem to get this to work than I anticipated. Anyone got any ideas on what to do.

This question was closed by the author