How to FORCE a Dynamic Disk Overlay?

[suklee]

I exchanged the 2.5 to 3.5 adapter and the HD detected now, finally. But now I have another problem...

I'm trying to apply a DDO (Dynamic Disk Overlay) on the drive so my old notebook can utilize the entire 20GB, instead of 8.4GB. However , when I run Seagate's DiscWizard util on my desktop, it sees the my BIOS can utilize the entire 20GB, so I do not have an option to apply a DDO. I'm trying to find out how to force a DDO onto the disk but without success so far.

Might have to resort to contacting Seagate tech support...

 

[Connoisseur]

i'm assuming that you have a cd drive in the travelmate. You have to run the installation through the cd and make sure the disk is formatted in fat32 (not NTFS) or else windows 98 won't install on it. after it's formatted windows 98 will install over win2k.

 

[johnjkr1]

You've got a whole bunch of problems without a floppy for a cd.

#1: if its NTFS, there really isnt anything you can do, 98 can't be setup from within win2k and there really isnt a way to "boot to dos" from 2k alone

#2: Even if its a FAT32 partition, how are you going to format it? you cant install 98 from within 2k

 

[suklee]

That's right, no CD rom drive, no floppy !

Thankfully it IS Fat32 so one less headache there.

I've located WinME (yes, ME... cant find 98), so say I have winME installation files on my hard drive. how can I get ME to install on top of Win2k?


[btw, the HD is only partitioned as one C drive]

 

[MrChad]

AFAIK, you can install 2K/XP on top of a 9x install, but not vice versa.

 

[suklee]

anyone... anyone out there who is up for this task?

Install Win98/ME with
-no floppy drive
-no cd rom drive
-one partition (C) with win2k on it

 

[lowtech1]

Does it have a USB port?

Can also try hooking the hdd onto another laptop & that have a cdrom drive. Then format C:, then install dos & copy the cab files over.

 

[JustMike]

Remove the hard drive from the notebook, connect to another PC running Windows 9x/Me, format the drive to be bootable, place installation files on hard drive, reinstall into notebok, boot from newly formatted drive, run setup.exe.

 

[Derango]

Originally posted by: JustMike
Remove the hard drive from the notebook, connect to another PC running Windows 9x/Me, format the drive to be bootable, place installation files on hard drive, reinstall into notebok, boot from newly formatted drive, run setup.exe.

You're going to need an adapter to connect the notebook drive to the desktop, but this is a good option.

 

[JustMike]

Yes, of course, a 2.5" to IDE/power adapter is required.

 

[suklee]

Remove the hard drive from the notebook, connect to another PC running Windows 9x/Me, format the drive to be bootable, place installation files on hard drive, reinstall into notebok, boot from newly formatted drive, run setup.exe.

! great idea !

I just removed the HD from the notebook... its an IBM Travelstar... but strangely when I shake it there seems to be something loose inside :frown::Q

Gonna go find an adapter for this puppy...

 

[suklee]

This is the sort of adapter that I need right?

From the picture.. it looks like I plug the 2.5" hd into there... and it splits it into a normal 40-pin IDE connector and a 4pin molex power connector.

 

[imported_Phil]

Yes, exactly. Get that disk into a different machine, and format the drive. Copy the installation files for ME onto it. However, now you're stuck. How do you run setup? You have no floppy and no CDROM drive, so you can't get a bootloader put onto it.

However, you could run setup to about half-way on the desktop machine, and then power off and put the hard disk into the laptop. That way, the hardware detection phase should then run on the laptop, and carry on installing as if nothing had happened.

Let us know how it goes, I'd be interested to see if it works!

 

[JustMike]

Boot from a Windows 98 floppy, "sys c:" or "format /s" the notebook hard drive, and it's bootable... it should be enough to get the setup.exe running.

 

[suklee]

JustMike / Dopefiend,

It worked splendidly! I did exactly as Mike described, and was able to load up WinME. All was well until....

I started playing around with ME's hidden boot files (to get the Hiberation file to save)

I created that with no problems... I then tried to replace IO.Sys, MSdos.sys etc. with original backups I had.

Then it gave me a "System Not Found" message. GREAT, I thought.. so I took the drive out and tried to do the same procedure, but this time it wouldn't work. To cut a long story short I ended up frying the drive

So in conclusion, apart from DUEs (Dumb User Errors), JustMike's method works wonders!

 

[suklee]

BUMP , help needed!! (new 1st post)

 

[imported_Phil]

Your problem is usually the drive not being plugged in correctly, or conflicting with another master or slave.
Stick it on its own channel, with nothing else there, and that should correct it.
You might also want to check that you have the adaptor on the correct way round- at work, ours "hangs" below the drive when it's plugged in, and leave the right-most sections of pins uncovered. They're the power pins and shouldn't be connected to if you want it to work

 

[suklee]

I exchanged the 2.5 to 3.5 adapter and the HD detected now, finally. But now I have another problem...

I'm trying to apply a DDO (Dynamic Disk Overlay) on the drive so my old notebook can utilize the entire 20GB, instead of 8.4GB. However , when I run Seagate's DiscWizard util on my desktop, it sees the my BIOS can utilize the entire 20GB, so I do not have an option to apply a DDO. I'm trying to find out how to force a DDO onto the disk but without success so far.

Might have to resort to contacting Seagate tech support...

 

[imported_Phil]

Have you enabled LBA (Logical Block Address) in the BIOS? If the Seagate software is insisting that your BIOS can see the whole 20Gb, then it might be because there's something in the BIOS that's not turned on or configured correctly.
Have a look at the disk setup screen in the BIOS, make sure that LBA is turned on and let us know what happens

 

[suklee]

Here is the reply I got from Seagate (super fast response, btw) :

You can adjust your BIOS to not recognize the full capacity.

1. Access your BIOS and disable LBA
2. Change your Cylinders to 1024, Heads to 15 or 16 and Sectors to 63

Your BIOS should now see only recognize the drive at approximately 540Mb.

It escaped me that I could 'trick' the BIOS into recognizing it as a 540MB drive. I can disable LBA fine, but unfortunately my Intel 845 motherboard does not allow me to set C, H, S so I'm SOL there. We have lots of old computers around the office though so I'm sure one of them will be able to see it as a 540mb drive