Because this post has come back, here’s a cleaned up answer.
Generally speaking, a hanging BIOS is typically due to a failed drive with a BIOS that doesn’t handle a failed hard drive well, or it’s a legacy system which requires manual cylinder/head data to determine the type or it hangs every time.
Since your system is from ~1996 with Socket 7, you are going to be dealing with a 28-bit LBA BIOS which is limited to 128GB. In your case, your practical limit is 120GB< as there are no IDE 128GB drives you want. Any IDE SSD you buy will often be junk and need adaptation anyway which is shoddy at best.
With many legacy systems like that, you have to know which “type” your drive is, especially if the automatic detection does not work, or it wasn’t added (yes, this was still a problem for a few years). Generally speaking, you either have to do a custom LBA setup, or select a drive Type predetermined by the BIOS, especially with faulty autodetection. The issue we run into now with these is it hasn’t been printed on drives in years simply due to the fact that it’s not as necessary today.
In order to find it, it is based on the Hard Disk Cylinders and Heads (Sectors are often calculated from those numbers). This data is normally entered into the system BIOS under the IDE section, which is how it determines the type or labels it as a custom drive outright. See the screenshot for an example of what this data looks like:
You can grab it with a program like Hard Disk Sentinel, but you need an adapter like this to get it.
If you use a CF to IDE, the conversion is NOT automatic like the ATA standard, so you need to do the math yourself. Thankfully, most CF cards are small enough the BIOSes don’t struggle but it is something to keep in mind.
12 comentários
Hi,
What is the make and model number of the PC or motherboard if it is a custom build?
Can you try another IDE HDD?
What capacity HDD is it and can the BIOS handle that capacity? Only asking as PATA (IDE) is getting old now so the motherboard might be old as well and initially there were limitations on the HDD capacity in some motherboards.
por jayeff
@jayeff To add to this, anything pre-2003 that hasn't been updated with a 48-bit LBA BIOS is limited to 120GB. 2003-2004 systems are iffy, and 2005+ is usually 48-bit.
IDE is a warning that it usually isn't worth repairing.
por Nick
@jayeff The computer is really old, the model number of motherboard is I430VX, i'll update the question with a link to the manual. I tried other HDDs but it does the same thing, I'm sure that the HDD (capacity 400 mb) works with that system because it was working fine before, then after i disconnected it and riconnected it, it started to do this thing. Thank you very much
por Alessandro Vanuzzo
@nick Thanks for the reply, the drive it's only 400 mb so i don't think this is the problem. Also the system is really old and certainly not worth repairing, but i'm just trying to get it working for taking back some old files from a couple of IDE hard drives
por Alessandro Vanuzzo
Hi @Alessandro Vanuzzo
Just in case the BIOS got corrupted somehow here's a page from the user manual for the motherboard which says that you may have to change the HDD detect from auto to manual if boot hangs and see how that goes or maybe reset the BIOS back to defaults perhaps.
por jayeff
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