Correcting BIOS Limitations and Partitioning Using Disk Manager

Correcting BIOS Limitations and Partitioning Using Disk Manager

The BIOS might contain limitations that can cause operational failures when you install one of the new and larger hard disk drives.

The following procedures contain steps to solve most known BIOS limitations using manual overrides and the Disk Manager software.

The following steps do not apply to IBM computers .

1.  Access the configuration-setup information.
2.  Select the drive number for the new drive that you are installing.

    Based on BIOS type, number of IDE controllers, and number of IDE devices in the computer, the  configuration-setup program displays options for up to four devices.

    Normally drives 1 and 2 are connected to the primary IDE controller and drives 3 and 4 are connected to the  secondary IDE controller.

3.  Based on the configuration at least one of the following options (listed in oreder of preference) is  available. Do one of the following:
   1.  Select the Auto Detect configuration-setup option if it is available.

       If the configuration-setup displays the correct capacity go to 'Using the Operating System for Partitioning'.  If the configuration-setup does not display the correct capacity, continue with 'Partitioning and Formatting Using Disk Manager'.

   2.  Select the User Definable drive type. The User Definable entry for BIOS configuration will be a number between 47 and 49. Enter 1024 for cylinders, 16 for heads, and 63 for sectors.  Set all other Landing Zone and Write Precomp entries to zero. When the partitioning process completes, configuration-setup still displays 504 MB, but you can  use the fully capacity of the drive. Save the changes, close the configuration-setup program, and continue with 'Partitioning and Formatting Using Disk Manager'.
   3.  Select Drive Type 1 The value displayed for the type 1 drive is 1 MB. When the partitioning process completes, configuration-setup still displays 10 MB, but you can use the fully  capacity of the drive. Save the changes, close the configuration-setup program, and continue with 'Partitioning and Formatting Using Disk Manager'.