[RESOLVED] WD 20.5 GB showing up as 8 GB

[jimmm33]

A customer wants a new Western Digital 20.5 GB HD put into an old Gateway. The model # on the case is P5-166 XL. It has 40 mb ram and P166. I put the drive in the machine but it is showing up as 8 GB in the BIOS. I tried manually changing the parameters but it wouldn't let me change the capacity. How can I get it to recognize the entire drive?

[Larommi]

You either have to update the bios or load Ez-Drive that came with the new HDD. Just make sure that you have a boot disk for the OS you want to install or have the other drive hooked up and do a direct copy to the new drive.

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You spend your whole life believing that you're on the right track,
only to discover that you're on the wrong train.

[saleenrrr]

I believe the WD drives comes with a disk with a drive overlay program that esentialy tricks the bios in to seeing a smaller drive yet windows can see it all. I have not had much luck with the overlay on older machines I recomend getting a promise pci ide controller card it will work perfectly and will probably be a little faster since it can take advantage of the newer protocols for hard drives.

[tracker]

Ideally they'll have a bios update that will allow it to see 20GB ...failing that, I'd take that add in card over drive overlay software anytime...

Craig