BIOS hard drive barrier

[robodisco]

i've a 80G seagate barracuda 7200.7 which was installed with win xp pro and the master drive. i reformatted it recently n now i can't reinstall my windows xp for some reason. i didn't think of it as a problem as i thought i could use it as a SLAVE drive to my 30G seagate hdd. that's when the problems arose. my bios only recognises the 80G hdd as 33G when it is in slave mode. however when it is master mode, it recognises it as 80G because of the dynamic driver overlay (DDO) software inbuilt in the hdd.
i updated my bios, to no effect.
I've downloaded the seagate disc starter edition to install the dynamic drive overlay (DDO) on the 30G seagate, even then it stil does not work. even worse, i updated the DDO of the 80G hdd n now it does not recognise the 80G even in master mode! so basically i'm screwed!
reason y i can't format my 80G hdd is because i have 2 partitions, one containing data i rele need. n i doubt that it would solve any problems anyway.
Pls help. i'm just between a rock and a hard place now, and i've totally run out of ideas.
any help appreciated, thanks.

Kenny

athlon xp1800. 512ddram. shuttle ak35gt.

[chanto!]

i've a 80G seagate barracuda 7200.7 which was installed with win xp pro and the master drive. i reformatted it recently n now i can't reinstall my windows xp for some reason. i didn't think of it as a problem as i thought i could use it as a SLAVE drive to my 30G seagate hdd. that's when the problems arose. my bios only recognises the 80G hdd as 33G when it is in slave mode. however when it is master mode, it recognises it as 80G because of the dynamic driver overlay (DDO) software inbuilt in the hdd.
i updated my bios, to no effect.
I've downloaded the seagate disc starter edition to install the dynamic drive overlay (DDO) on the 30G seagate, even then it stil does not work. even worse, i updated the DDO of the 80G hdd n now it does not recognise the 80G even in master mode! so basically i'm screwed!
reason y i can't format my 80G hdd is because i have 2 partitions, one containing data i rele need. n i doubt that it would solve any problems anyway.
Pls help. i'm just between a rock and a hard place now, and i've totally run out of ideas.
any help appreciated, thanks.

Kenny

athlon xp1800. 512ddram. shuttle ak35gt.

You MB looks to be pretty recent so it shouldn't have any BIOS limitation.
Are you jumpering the drive correctly as slave? There should be no shunt for it to operate in slave mode.

+000
+000 Master or single drive

0000
0000 Slave

++00
++00 Master with non ATA compatible slave

0+00
0+00 cable select

000+
000+ Alternate capacity. Limits drive capacity to 32GB

[TallCool1]

i've a 80G seagate barracuda 7200.7 which was installed with win xp pro and the master drive. i reformatted it recently n now i can't reinstall my windows xp for some reason.

As recent as your motherboard is, I doubt that a size limit is your problem; the limit is probably 137 GB under XP. In fact, your dynamic drive overlay may be part of your problem. If the drive is not the boot drive, the DDO may not be being read properly and lead to what you are seeing.

[robodisco]

rele appreciate the feedback. i've double n triple checked the jumper settings, so probably got those bases covered.

like i mentioned above, i updated the DDO to v9.86 (on the 80G hdd) from its original v9.84. Unlike before, it now reads the drive as 33G even when it is in master mode. so i was wondering if there was a way i could restore the original version, or get the new version to work wit the drive. i've tried the seagate disk wizard, to no avail.

[TallCool1]

i've a 80G seagate barracuda 7200.7 which was installed with win xp pro and the master drive. i reformatted it recently n now i can't reinstall my windows xp for some reason.

Have you tried putting the ST drive as the master on the secondary IDE channel?