Formatting and Partitioning a Hard Drive

[Chad Noles]

Ok,here's a tricky one.......well for me anyway.I need to format and partition a hard drive for a computer.The drive has to be on a controller card.It's an ATA/100 running on an old PCI ATA/33 MB,hence the controller card.Can this be done?I'm not sure how the BIOS will recognize the controller if there is no regular IDE channel being used.The hard drive will be the master for this computer(if it works).Any ideas if I can get into the regular fdisk and partition commands using the controller card.If so,I can take it from there.Thanks.

 

[Rat]

Well, there's obviously no problem with running an ATA100 drive on an ATA33 card. It'll just run at the lower speed.

In my experience, an awful lot of PCI IDE cards present themselves as SCSI to the BIOS. Older BIOSes are funny about more than two IDE channels. Much the same goes for my SATA drive. The BIOS sees it as SCSI, and the OS takes it from there.

Find the manufacturer of the HD. Download their utility to check SCSI disks. This will boot into quasi-DOS from a floppy. From there, run real DOS, if necessary, and run Fdisk.

Have I misunderstood the question? I usually do.

Cheers,
Rat.

 

[a_unique_person]

Usually the biggest problem is that the BIOS cannot handle a hard disk that is bigger than it was designed to support. Well, it will, but only, say, 2GB of 8GB, for example.

 

[Chad Noles]

It's my understanding that I can use the LBS option to let the BIOS use the INT 13 extention to recognize the large drive.I'm gonna divide it up into three different drives anyway,so I don't see a problem there.My real issue was getting the BIOS to see the PCI controller card so that I could Fdisk and partition.Maybe this makes more sense.(?)
Because I'm hoping to use this hard drive as the master for the computer,I wondered if the bios would correctly find it.I may have to change the boot sequence if I need to.
Ratcomp,the hard drive ia ATA/100 and the PCI card is a ATA/100,but the PCI bus is ATA/33,so yes,it will probably run slow.No biggie.The computer is just a cheap backup.I'm not a big gamer or in "Need of Speed".I'm just trying to utilize some parts I have laying around.If you can add any further infomation,I would appreciate it.Thanks in advance.
I have updated drivers for the PCI card and the MB,though
I am VERY weary of flashing the BIOS.Only as a last resort,would I attempt that.No Guts!