Hard drive on 486 SX

[bogof]

My grandson has an old 486SX machine that will not recognise the hard drive, even though when I go into setup it is still listed as the user drive. When I try to Detect Master it cannot find it. The drive is at the bottom of the list and at the top of the list it says not fitted. Anybody help please?

[COKOL]

Hello bogof,

I had a similar problem with an old computer of mine. I found that the problem was that my computer no longer had enough memory space. I found that if I cleared away some of my unwanted files from the hard drive, the computer began to recognise new hard ware.

Good luck

[bogof]

Thanks COKOL, but I can't access the hard drive to remove any files!

[mattie]

There is a quick way to see if your PC, has recognised a hard disk, but it requires a DOS boot disk, version 6.22 preferably, with fdisk copied onto the disk, if it is not already there. Boot the PC with the disk, then type fdisk at the prompt, if the hard disk is being recognised then fdisk will run, if not you will see the message "no fixed disks present" displayed. To be of more help, I would need more details, such as size of hard drive, does the motherboard have on-board IDE controllers and how many, or is there a separate controller card.

[Sensei]

I'm assuming that since you are saying that the drive is at the bottom of the list, that the drive is being recognized as a slave, not a master drive. There should be some jumper settings on the drive the set it to master or CS. OR, it could be that the hard drive is too large for the BIOS to recognize. In that case, you may need to upgrade the BIOS, which if it's a 486, I doubt that even if you could find the upgrade, that it would help. Usually, the hard drive manufacturer has a utility disk that will install a bios extension that will allow your BIOS to read the hard drive. There will also be instructions on how to set up the hard drive in the BIOS settings. Most HD manufacturers have the files available on their website. I don't know what installing the BIOS extension will do to the existing data on the drive- it's been awhile since I've had to do that. One last thought, if this hard drive just suddenly suddenly stopped working, then these suggestions won't help you at all! Listen to the hard drive spinning up; if you know what a good one sounds like, it's sometimes easy to recognize a bad drive just by the sound it makes. Check out the manufacture's website, usually they have quite a bit of information on even the oldest drives.