ok i have a problem, i'm setting up a really crappy computer...hey wat the heck, all the parts were free...ok so i got everything set up. but there is one problem, it does not automatically recognize the hard drive. so i wanted to go into bios and set it up manually. but there is a problem. i dont know how big the hard drive is. so is there a way to find out in bios or something?

On the hard drive itself should be a STICKER with the Hard drive's specification. Or go to the HD manufacture's web site and at the SUPPORT link punch in the model name and/or number and you can get the specs like that also online.

First make sure that your connectors are tight on the motherboard and the drive and that the drive has power. Test another data cable if you have one. If you have your BIOS set to auto detect and you still see nothing you can do a couple of things. 1)Check your connectors again. (Primary and Secondary connector on the cable, red stripe on cable goes to pin 1 on HD) 2)Check the jumper settings on the HD. [master(primary), slave(secondary), cable select] 3)You may be able to enter a user defined type of HD. You have to manually enter the number of heads and cylinders (which is normally written on the top of the drive housing) If you cant manually enter the values you can select the closest match. You MUST match the correct number of heads but you can select fewer cylinders. Which means some of the HD's cylinders won't be used. This post may help in the setup. Its about HD modes.(CHS,normal, LBA, ECHS) http://computing.net/hardware/wwwboard/forum/2223.html