My system uses the EZDRIVE overlay utility for large drive support. Why I don't know, since I would think that my MSI K7T mobo with Promise Raid capability would support large drives natively??? The manual does not mention any limitations.

Anyway, I lost access to my D & E drives, which are WD80 and Maxtor 5 respectively. The C is a WD 40GB. It was having some problems for some time...I could not defrag it with MS or Norton, etc. Then the system started to slow down with mouse jerky movements, etc, and I figured that I was getting r/w problems on C.

After losing access to D/E, I ran the "LifeGuard" test utils that come with the WD & Max installation diskettes. D/E passed the extended tests, but C flunked SMART status checkpoints 1/2 and got an error code 0207.

I talked to WD today and their Tech seemed to think that somehow the C drive was no longer supporting the EZDrive overlay program and that affected D/E. Using Fdisk, the WD80 shows up as a non-DOS partition!

I have re-partitioned and formatted C using the WD installation utils, but D/E are still not visible to Win98SE...but show up in the BIOS correctly.

Any ideas on how to regain access to the data on D/E? Moving them to another PC as slaves does no good.

Win

Data recovery tends to be complicated but take a look at this page...

http://www.diydatarecovery.nl/~tkuurstra/dors.htm .

You'll find EZ bios involved with the recovery process.

The links at the top of the page have drop down menus.

NytOwl

Thanks for the reference. It looks like a lot to digest! I've downloaded their tools. I guess I'll read up and experiment.

Win

Just curious, did the tech try to help you reinstall EzDrive so you could attempt to save your data and start over?

NytOwl

Edit:

I found this in WD's knowledge base for EZ-Bios (but it may not apply to EZDrive).
-------------
Question
I just reformatted my master drive, now I can't access my Western Digital slave drive!

Answer
Check to determine if Device Manager in Windows sees the drive. If Device Manager sees the drive but My Computer and Explorer do not, it is most likely a partition issue. The easiest way to check partitions is with FDISK. When in Windows, go to the Start Menu and choose Run. In the Run box type FDISK and click OK. This will bring up a large DOS box asking if you wish to enable large disk support. Answer Yes. You will then see several options. Choose option 5 (Change current fixed disk), and choose the correct drive. Once the drive has been selected, choose option 4 (Display partition information). You will most likely see that the partition is either not present or may be showing as NON-DOS.

If you see a NON-DOS partition that means the partition is there, however it is unreadable by Windows. This usually happens when EZ-BIOS is not handling the drive correctly. If this is the case, you must install the EZ-BIOS boot code on your boot or master drive in order to access the partition.

To do this, boot to a Windows or DOS startup disk. At the A: prompt insert the Data Lifeguard Tools disk, type DLGEZ /MBR and press Enter. This should re-install EZ-BIOS to your boot or master drive, allowing you to access the slave drive and all its data.
------------
The part about using windows probably doesn't apply for you but can you boot to an A: prompt and go from there?

Nytowl,

Thanks for the tip. The Tech did mention doing this BUT he said to key in "DLGEZ/MBR", all as a single string. I even asked him if there was not a space before the slash...he said no. In your text it looks like the "/MBR" is separated by a space, making it input to the DLGEZ application (makes sense to me). I'll try it.

Win

Those instructions are written (copied) just as they are at WD.

I agree about the space.

It doesn't sound like you got a very capable tech, you may have better luck if you have to try again.

NytOwl

Well it took both suggestions to beat this mutha! First I went back and reinstalled EZBIOS on both the C and D drives...still no D in windows, but now FDISK showed the correct capacity for D.

Then I went into PT Edit, and changed the Partition ID code as suggested in the Web page article.

Rebooted and ta da, there's D in all it's glory. Thanks for the help,
there was more on that drive than I had even remembered..early "ol timers" has set in.

Win

Well, yee haw!

You still may be on thin ice because the C drive failed the Smart test and produced the 0207 code.
WD's 0207 code definition says Replace Drive.

I think you need to find out for sure whether or not you have to have the EzBios overlay.
It would be best if you can get rid of it but that could be a major problem.
Anyway, can you run the Data Lifeguard test again on the drives to see if the 0207 code still appears for C:?

NytOwl

Here's a new additional wrinkle. My son had a "bad" drive that I now think may have started this whole mess. It's a Quantum Fireball 30GB that he said "went bad on him".

I've tried to read it in my sytem before...unsuccessfully, and now I'm wondering if it isn't at the heart of my EZBIOS problem?

After I got my own drives straight again I put his drive in as a slave on the 2ndary controller. The system did not see it at all, AND failed to boot. After giving a boot failure message for the cdrom. Boot order is ATA,CDROM. I tried it on the primary as a slave (w/2ndary unplugged), and was able to boot into windows, but FDISK said that there was no partition on the drive. Trying to get the WD or Maxtor utils to run against it was unsuccessful, a drive error was reported and it would go no further.

After all this messing around, and recabling back to normal, I wound up have to re-install EZBIOS. Somehow it got disabled by the existence of the Quantum drive in the system???

Don't know what to think about this development? If I could get a util to run against that drive I feel like there would be a chance to straighten it out. I have no idea what was done to it!

Win

This is one of the problems with using drive overlays.

I think Windows is trying to rebuild the master boot record when you start up with the substitute drive connected.
This is probably corrupting the EzBios master boot record.

You really need to backup all your important data onto media outside your computer like CDs or tape before you lose it because the partition tables can become corrupted beyond recovery and the data can't be accessed again.

Can you put your son's drive back in his computer and boot up with the diagnostic floppy for his drive to check it for problems?

NytOwl

For anyone that uses a computer the way most here do, trying new utilities, adding and removing hardware, the use of any drive overlay will eventually result in problems. They should be avoided if at all possible. The only way of setting up a drive I have ever trusted is fdisk.

Shelly

I am working on my friends packard-bell. He has a pentium 120 with a 1 gig hard drive. They want to increase the HD up to 4 Gig. Would this upgrade work with their slower pentium? Also, would the WD data lifeguard software work with non-WD harddrives?

My neighorhood computer store said an 18 Gb HD would be too big for this PC????

KennyS

The problem is not the speed of the computer, the problem is the BIOS in an old machine will noyt recognize today's large drives, they did not exist when the BIOS was made.

Shelly

>Also, would the WD data lifeguard software work with non-WD harddrives?<

The WD tools require a WD drive in the system.

Larger drives can be installed in older computers by installing an add-on controller card such as the ones from Promise.

NytOwl

If I install a 4 gb harddrive with the pentium 120, would I still need a controller card? How does the card connect to the mobo? If neither drive is a Western Digital, would Norton Ghost work for a disk-to-disk image copy? Thanks much!

KennyS

>If I install a 4 gb harddrive with the pentium 120, would I still need a controller card?<
You should be able to divide the 4Gig drive into partitions the bios can handle unless there's something unusual about that Packard Bell bios that I don't know about.
I think you could divide the drive into two 2Gig partitions and avoid adding a controller card.

>How does the card connect to the mobo?<
The computer needs to have an unused PCI slot to insert the card into.

>If neither drive is a Western Digital, would Norton Ghost work for a disk-to-disk image copy?<
The brand of drive doesn't matter with Ghost.
Making disk-to-disc images requires a destination that isn't the same as the source.
If you're making an image of C:\, you have to select a different destination such as D:\.

NytOwl

You can't partition what the BIOS can't see! The BIOS may be able to use LBA translation mode for larger drives (over 528MB), but may even then be limited to a 2GB maximum.

Shelly

kstump,

Shelly's right, he's a lot more experienced with your system than I am.

To know exactly what the Packard Bell's upgrade options are you'll have to know what motherboard is in it to begin with.

Go here and see if you can find that out.

http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lakes/8774/pbmother.html#Model

NytOwl

Edit: Actually, we're getting off topic from the original subject of this thread, it would be better to start a new thread titled something like Packard Bell HDD upgrade?.