I have a particular problem, and I do not know how to solve it. I am working with a hp vectra vl and it will recognize a quantun fire ball 3.5 g and a Segate 10.5 g with windows 98 I ahve other drives with win 98 and it will not recognize them. I dont know if it is a formatin problem (fat vs. nts)or bios , hardrive????? help

http://www.infopackets.com/how+to+install+a+hard+drive.htm What you see is what you get, and what you get is what you see!

As always you should fault find from the beginning. The first place to look with hard drive problems is in bios. If bios does not see the drive, it won't tell windows about it. If bios does not recognise any drive, check that it is jumpered correctly. Each IDE channel can accept one master and one slave drive. Two of the same will result in neither being seen. In the case of drives larger than 8GB, bios may only recognise it as being 8GB, if it if formatted larger than this, windows will have problems. After the drives pass the bios check, the next step is to boot using a Windows98 startup disk. use the command 'fdisk' and option 4 to look at the partition information. A NTFS partition will be returned as a 'non DOS' partition. As you are aware, windows 98 cannot read those.

The Bios 'might' have a 32gb limit. If it does, it will not recognize any drives over this size.

i was trying to wipeout my harddrive but i accident erased the primary partition. Now my commuter wont recognize the hardrive.