Reference number: CH000274

Not able to see or boot with hard drive over 33.8GB.

Issue:

Not able to see or boot with hard drive over 33.8GB.

Cause:

BIOS limitation, known to occur with Award BIOS 4.5x

Solution:

Verify that the hard disk drive is being fully recognized in your CMOS. If the hard disk drive is not being fully detected by CMOS it is likely you are encountering a BIOS limitation. This issue can be resolved one of two ways.

1. Obtain BIOS update from your manufacturer. It is only recommended that you upgrade your BIOS if the update explicitly states that it will resolve this limitation.
2. Utilize the DDO (Disk Drive Overlay) diskette included with the hard disk drive or obtainable through the hard disk drive manufacturer.

Information about CMOS and how to enter CMOS can be found on our CMOS page.

Related Issues:

• See document CH000032 for additional information about why you may only be able to see a two gig partition or drive.
• Additional information about why you may not be able to see over 8.4GB can be found on document CH000273.
• See document CH000276 for additional information about why Windows 95 does not support hard drives over 32GB.