40G hard drive not identified in bios

[JUAN DOS]

I have been using this W-D drive for a few months as a drive to copy and b/u partitions from other PCs, but lately It cannot be identified in bios.

I am running an Abit KT7A-raid board. Which is running fine.
I have a Trios HD switch which boots to20G 98se HD, or 20G XPpro HD (fat32)
The only recent change to the system is the addition of the XP hard drive.
I am not trying to boot to the 40G (though I tried just that using W98 boot disk, failed)
I have no OS on the 40Gdrive. It is fdisked, partitioned, and formatted fat32 using W98 boot disk.
The 40G is the only drive of that size that I own. The PC IDs all other size HDs, from .5G to 20G when set in same manner as the 40G.

I have tried it as slave and master on different IDE channels.
Jumpers, and cables are set correctly and working with other drives installed.
Bios is set "auto detect"
The PC doesn’t hang during boot, it just doesn’t ID the drive.

I don’t want to experiment in the Abit box, so I wiped the dust off of an old Asus box with AMD 400, Win98se.
I set the 40G as master on IDE2…..it hangs in Bios at ID master IDE2.
Ditto slaved on both IDE1, IDE2.
Tried ATA33 cables, and ATA100, and jumpers are correct re each configuration.

Now, I install a Promise Ultra 100tx2 controller card into the old Asus.

The 40G is found by raid card bios, working fine in 98, generally AOK, but by trial & error found that only way to make it work is to jumper it slave but on the master connector on cable.

What really confuses me is that the 40G has been working in the Abit, and other machines previously.

I just ran W-D data lifeguard and repartitioned the drive, BUT, lifeguard says that the boot track is defective and aborted format. I tried B/U restore the boot sector, to no avail.
Now I want to write zeros, but lifeguard will not cooperate. Lifeguard only recognizes the drive correctly part time, and not on the menu to write zeros.

I got it to format using Partition Magic in the old PC while slaved to W98 disk. But all is the same re recognition and writing zeros.

After doing search, I read similar threads at the PC Guide forum, and found my symptoms are not unique. Several were on Abit boards, and W-D drives.

Sorry this explanation was so long. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[JUAN DOS]

update

I phoned W-D, and was told this:

"If you have an older system that does not support the capacity of the hard drive and your system hangs or freezes while auto detecting a hard drive, use alternate double-jumper settings

Note: If a Controller Card is used then our Data Lifeguard Tools software is not needed, since our software can not communicate with a hard drive that is installed on a Controller Card. In this instance using FDISK and Format to partition/format the drive is all that is needed"

[JUAN DOS]

If you have taken the time to try to read this far, I will take the time conclude the saga properly.

Per W-D support instructions, I was able to double jumper the drive, set it up as master on IDE 1, and run the W-D diagnostic program. The drive is now being written with zeros. In 1.5 hours it will be back to factory new condition.

The double jumpering was required due to 32G barrier in the bios of the old Asus board.
The bios could not identify the drive properly.

To add to the confusion, the W-D diagnostic program will not run properly on a raid card, as I had it set up previously.

Because of all the failed boots, the mbr on the old 3G that was in the Asus went south. After fdisk, & during W98 install, I kept getting major error problems. I replaced the ram with a known good stick, and all is well in the test box.

Shop time included, the 40G is now a $500 drive. You can bet your patuti that I'll be less careless regarding it's health.

Finis