It's brand new IBM 120gb HDD, my computer cannot detect the Hdd at all, I got set the jumper in master, some hav told me that to use WinME bootdisk to format ... but, HOW CAN I FORMAT WITHOUT DETECTED THE HDD???? Thanks .... Bernard

If the HDD isn't detected in the BIOS, then you probably have the jumper in the wrong position. Normally on a new drive, it's not necessary to change the jumper settings at all, as they are already set as a Primary Master.

Se the BIOS to auto detect, and then it should pick up the HDD, if not check to see if the IDe cable is correctly inserted and the power cable is too. This may sound simple but you would not believe how many people make this mistake.. and in my line work I have to charge to put this right.

120GB drive on a MoBO that supports a P3-450? What motherboard is in the PC? What chip set is on the motherboard? What BIOS version? Most of your old motherboards wont be able to detect large hard drives, depening on the chip set and BIOS version. If at first you dont fix it, Try harder!

Its unlikely that it will be recognised by your mobo my old mobo wouldn`t detect a 60gb drive so you have several options: 1: Check your motherbord manufacturers site, there may be a BIOS upgrade to enable it to recognise larger drives there was one for my old board which was for a 450 also and that enabled support for 130GB drives but you need to ask whether its worth spoending $$$ on what is now a pretty old system. 2: Buy a new Motherboard that will support that size drive along with processer and ram 3: Use a drive overlay (personally i wouldn`t use one although i have installed them for other ppl). You can d/l one from the drive manufacturers website or it may have come with the drive on a floppy. 4: Sell the 120gb drive and buy 2 60gb drives a p3-450 board should be able to detect that If you go for option 2 then you will need to use the ME version of fdisk to get 1 large partition s 98 Fdisk limit is 64GB as far as I can recall and ME Fdisk supports around 130GB, or you could use something like partition magic . . . . That`s assuming jumpers etc are set correvctly but i`m pretty sure it`ll be your motherboard. You may be better off selling your old system and putting the money towards new one. HTH Woof

If bios won't allow/support a 120gig drive... (even with bios updates), you could simply install a Promise (or similar) controller card. It wil recognise all current drive specs; provides 2 x 2 EIDE channels. They come in PCI format (and occasionally they can still be found in ISA format); cost around $40??? Simple to install etc. You can download an update to Fdisk (for '98) from M$-land which supports drives over 64Gig. Add it to the standard '98SE bootdisk (i.e. overwrite/replace the Fdisk already on the floppy). But you will still require a bios that supports larger drives. I tend to discourage overlay software (had a few less than encouraging experiences with it all years back); the less between an OS and the drive the better. The Promise card (+ the Fdisk update) is the least painful and simplest/safest approach - if no bios update available...?

Thanks trvlr i completely forgot that option!!! I must be getting old Woof