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General discussion

Seagate 160G HDD reinstallation problem...

Jan 30, 2005 2:37PM PST

I have a seagate ST3160023A 160G hd...and i just installed a new motherboard (gigabyte 7NF-RZ) and formatted my master WD 80G harddrive...now when i put in the 160g...i used the discwizard from seagate but the only option to install the drive is to format it first...but i just want to install it back to normal as a slave..right now the drive is detected but it is reading 0mb...and when i try to open it it asked me to format the drive...is there any way i can install the drive without formatting it? i also tried an IDE controller...same biggie...

help please
thank you!

Discussion is locked

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bumpp
Jan 31, 2005 3:07AM PST

seagate told me i cant do it..but i might try a usb external harddrive holder...will that work? cause the codes aren't right for my new mobo thats why it's not detecting as 160 but as 0...

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This can happen
Jan 31, 2005 5:43AM PST

Tell something about the OS and service pack level before and after reformatting. You should not need any utility from Seagate to install the drive. If some sort of overlay was used to get around a size limitation from your old MB, this could be the problem. The new MB BIOS will not read it properly. Does anything sound familiar there?

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..?
Feb 1, 2005 2:53AM PST

Windows XP pro SP2 only formatted my C: ....the 160g drive is set to storage. seagates program keep on asking to format before installing...and windows tell me that it can not recognize file system (ntfs, fat32) only shows 31.4g of space also

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What capacity is displayed in the BIOS?
Feb 1, 2005 9:24AM PST

Also, is there any chance that the drive has the jumper set to limit it to 32 gigs. As I said, you do not need the Seagate software to install the drive. Sometimes these use, what I termed, an overlay. The overlay is a workaround for some older MB BIOS that would not otherwise be able to accommodate the full size of the drive. If that's the case, even XP on your boot drive will probably not recognize the format of the drive. Here's what you might try. Make sure jumpers on both drives are set to cable select (CS). Get hold of a Win 98 boot disk or something with Fdisk on it. Boot from a floppy and run this....fdisk /mbr. It will attempt to repair the master boot record. See if XP will see the drive then.

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,...
Feb 3, 2005 1:18PM PST

where can i find that win98 boot disk? yes my drives are on cable select...

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Win98 boot disk will do you NO GOOD with 160GB drives.
Feb 3, 2005 9:50PM PST
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My last thought
Feb 3, 2005 11:52PM PST

After Bob's input, I am still wondering if the 160 gig drive was originally set up with an overlay. These don't remove by conventional methods. They need the original utility or one from the manufacturer to wipe the disk. When this happens, data on them is lost. Sorry but no other ideas come to mind.