Missing/damaged file system

[petuniasdad]

Hello everyone!

I have a computer that seems to have issues with certain hard drives attached to the Primary IDE as a slave drive. I have had 2 hard drives (160MB and 200MB) that have both had their file systems corrupted on boot up. I have managed to salvage some of the data that was on these hard drives and they are now in a different computer and appear to be working properly. On the computer that the file system issue occurred, I can use a smaller size hard drive (currently a 40MB) with no issues at all.

To all you extremely helpfull people out there, my question is this....

Is there a reason that the larger hard drives are having issues while the smaller drives are not on this computer's Primary IDE? The problem DOES not seem to occur when the larger hard drives are attached to the Secondary IDE as either master or slave. Perhaps there is something that needs changed in the BIOS? Or perhaps I just have a goofy computer that likes to give me headaches.

Any suggestions about this issue are most welcome. Thanks to everyone in advance for their assistance with this problem.

Have a great day!!!

[Neil]

Operating system? File system? (FAT/NTFS) How long has this happened? Virus scan?

[patio]

System specs along with what Neil asked for would also be helpful...

And someone will be along shortly to assist.

patio.   8-)

[soybean]

And, what are the make and model of both computers?  

Sounds like you're encountering a BIOS limitation.  Here's an article: Hard Drive Size Limitations and Barriers, or see more Google results @ http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=hard+drive+size+limitation

[petuniasdad]

Sorry, I was out-of-town and just checked in to see the assistance.

Both computers are running XP. One is an AMD 3000+ and the other is an Intel 2.67. NTFS on all hard drives on both computers. The computers are not of any particular make or model as they are assembled from parts (i.e. not purchased from a retail store or online in fully assembled condition).  The motherboard on the quirky AMD computer is from MSI and the motherboard on the Intel system is an ASUS.

A virus/spyware/adware scan on both systems is clean.

Here's a new twist to the problem. I recently ordered another 160MB hard drive and have formatted it with NTFS as well. The format was completed through XP. I have no issue with the recently added 160MB hard drive. However, when I remove that drive and put a different one on, I get the same problem as before. Could it be something with the OS or BIOS, that it doesn't like having the hard drives swapped? I will read the suggested article to see if there's any assistance in there. However, with the computer running properly with a freshly formatted 160MB hard drive, I would think the size limitation wouldn't be an issue.

So, to summerize....it appears that the computer has no issues with any size hard drive as long as the hard drive is formatted through Windows. Once the hard drive is replaced, the issues start regardless of whether the replacement hard drive was formatted originally by XP or not.

Thank you all for the assistance with this problem. I will continue to try different things with the computer to see if I can't get it resolved and checking these forums to see if there are any more questions/comments pertaining to this issue.

Thanks again for the help and have a great day!!!