80GB Drive Seen as 32GB on AX6BC

I installed a new Western Digital 80GB
WD800JB hard drive on a computer with an
AOpen AX6BC motherbaord. For some reason,
the BIOS is reporting the drive's size as
32GB on some but not all of the system boots.
When I try to install Windows XP on this
drive I get an "error loading operating system"
during the first boot of XP from the drive.

Any ideas why the AX6BC is having problems
seeing the full 80GB of the drive? I made
sure it had the newest BIOS, dated 2002.
Thanks.

 

The newer hard drives have an additional jumper setting that sets their
maximum size to 32GB, so that older BIOS'/PCs can use them. Make sure
that jumper is not set.

Also, in some cases even though a mobo may have the latest BIOS, that
BIOS may not be able to deal with hard drives greater than 32GB.

One of the annoying things about AOpen BIOS releases, is that they do
not make any mention of the size of hard drives a particular BIOS
allows.

There is a newer BIOS, version 2.59 from Feb 2003, available for the
base AX6BC board.

 

Brad, thanks for your reply. I'm pretty sure I loaded the newest
BIOS version. It's version 2.59. When the machine boots it says
the BIOS date is Dec 25 2002, so I guess that's when AOpen actually
finished working on it.

According to AOpen BIOS info for this board, even some of the older
BIOS versions could deal with hard drives 128GB and even bigger, so
version 2.59 shouldn't have any problems with just an 80GB.

I'll look into that 32GB jumper setting for the drive. I know I
didn't set it, but I guess it's possible it got set that way at
the factory.

 

1. In the BIOS setup, is the hard drive detection set to AUTO detect,
AUTO mode?
2. On the XP installation setup screen that shows the disk
partition(s), what does it show as the capacity of the entire disk?

 

Andy, thanks for te reply. In the BIOS setup, the drive
is set for auto detect and auto mode. On the first page
of the setup, the BIOS says that the drive is 80GB, but when
it displays the drive size during boot up, it says 32GB.

During the XP isntall the drive size is 80GB.

 

1. During XP installation you should see the following screen for an
80GB drive containing no partitions:
====================================================
Windows XP Professional Setup

The following list shows the existing partitions and
unpartitioned space on this computer.

Use the UP and DOWN ARROW keys to select an item in the list.

 To set up Windows XP on the selected item, press ENTER.

 To create a partition in the unpartitioned space, press C.

 To delete the selected partition, press D.

³76294 MB Disk 0 at Id 0 on bus 0 on atapi [MBR]
³
³ Unpartitioned space 76294 MB
³
³
====================================================

2. After pressing C to create a partition you should see the following
screen:
====================================================
Windows XP Professional Setup

You asked Setup to create a new partition on
76294 MB Disk 0 at Id 0 on bus 0 on atapi [MBR].


 To create the new partition, enter a size below and
press ENTER.

 To go back to the previous screen without creating
the partition, press ESC.


The minimum size for the new partition is 8 megabytes (MB).
The maximum size for the new partition is 76294 megabytes (MB).
Create partition of size (in MB): 76294
====================================================

3. If you create the maximum partition size, you should end up with a
formatted partition of about 74GB.