Hello,

I have a very difficult (and maybe impossible) problem to solve.

IBM PC300 GL with latest BIOS (7/2002)
The original hard-drive failed, so I bought a Western Digital EIDE
320GB
Of course, the PC's BIOS can't see all of that space, so I bought a
Belkin Ultra ATA/133 controller card which is supposed to give me the
ability to use up to 300GB.

I spent a lot of time on the phone with Belkin and Western Digital and
we narrowed it down to one basic problem: The PC's BIOS can't see/use
the Belkin card as a start-up device i.e. I WANT to use the following
sequence: 1) Floppy, 2) CD-ROM, 3) BELKIN CARD 4) disabled but since
there doesn't seem to be a way to set the Belkin card up to be a start-
up device, the BIOS attempts to boot up from the hard-drive which it
can't access (because it's connected to the Belkin and not the
motherboard.)

Does anyone know how I can configure (or fool) the PC BIOS into using
the Belkin card as a start-up device? The only choices it presents me
are floppy, cd-rom, hard-drive and network.

Thanks for any help,

Mark

On Apr 26, 5:26 pm, MarkE <merlenme... (AT) nc (DOT) rr.com> wrote:
UPDATE: I scratched the idea of using the Belkin card, but had
success in using the full capacity of the Western Digital EIDE drive
(320GB.) Using the "Data Life" utilities that came with the drive, I
was able to create 27GB and 271GB partitions -- the old PC300GL bios
must have had the ability to see the large capacity partitions (I was
surprised.) Good news!

I proceeded to install XP Pro. During setup, the Windows installer
could see both partitions and even format them (NTFS.) More good
news! I formatted them and installed XP with no issues. But when I
shutdown and rebooted, it was thrown in to a loop of trying to boot,
quick blue-screen and another try at booting, then the message "cannot
read disk" or something like that. Bad news!

I deleted the partitions and re-installed XP -- same result. After the
third install, I did not shut down the PC until I figured out what I
would do first. The Western Digital Knowledge Base was very helpful.
Apparently, the large partitions can become corrupted under certain
conditions: two have to do with standby and hibernate (which I ensured
were turned off) and the third had to do with logging system failures
to the hard-drive. I went into "My Computer" "System Properties"
"Startup and Recovery" "System Failure" and deselected all three
options. The last one, "Automatically restart" was what prevented the
aforementioned looping and the PC booted up fine.

I reinstalled all of my software on my 27GB partition and a bunch of
data on the 271. Rebooted and shutdown many times without a problem.

A side point: I spoke with one person at Belkin who was very
helpful. I also spoke with someone at Western Digital who spent at
least 1/2 hour working through things with me. He and I concluded that
the Belkin card needed to be visible as a start-up device. The next
day, I needed to call Western Digital back for guidance on using the
"Data Life" tool and had a BIOS question. The woman I spoke with was
very snotty and condescending. She was of no help at all. I got
frustrated and said "so do you want me to throw the drive away or
return it?" she responded with something like "whatever." That's
when I got off the call and started with the WD knowledge base.

I appreciate it when I receive help from folks on the net ... so I
thought I would give something back.... Mark