Jason:
Correct me if I am wrong.
You have a 20 Gb hard drive that has come into your
possession. It never worked for you but you would like to
get the files off it. You have tried it in various computer
setups with no success. Because you cannot access the
drive you believe it is a mbr problem. Maybe yes, maybe no.
What you have is a hard drive that was formatted using
EZ BIOS in a computer with ROM BIOS that could not
access a 20 Gb drive. Connect the drive as the Primary master
in your computer. If the EZ BIOS set up has not been
damaged by your attempts to access it, EZ BIOS will make
the drive size look like the size acceptable to the ROM BIOS
under which it was formatted. Watch the opening screen
where the data for the hard drive is given. If it shows
about 2 Gb, then you can have 2 Gb partitions. If it shows
about 8 Gb, then you can have 8 Gb partitions.
(these numbers are well rounded).
If you boot the computer from a floppy before getting to the
hard drive, the hard drive will be invisible to you. You should
follow the instructions of Ben Moore, repeated below with
comments. I am not sure what your results will be if you try
any of this in a computer with ROM BIOS that will access
20 Gb, if you have problems, try doing it in a computer
with a 2 Gb or an 8 Gb limitation.
First make yourself a startup
disk from windows 98. Then follow Ben's Instructions below:
Wally
------------------------------------
Here are instructions from WD's site.
"Restoring the MBR with EZ-BIOS installed:
Boot the system without any media in either the floppy drive or CD-ROM
drive.
When you see a message that says, "Boot Loader Initializing, press and
hold
the control key to boot to a floppy", press the Ctrl key.
(If you do not get the screen described below, start over and
try to press the control key sooner).
With the option to boot to A: or C: on the screen, insert your operating
system startup disk into drive A: and press A to boot to the disk.
__________________________
(the one you made from windows 98)
(at this point try to access as many of the drive partions as
you can. If you cannot then do the MBR thing).
(you might try FDISK by itself first to see what it shows you
about the partitions on the hard drive).
==============
At the A:\> prompt, type FDISK /MBR, then press Enter.
This should rebuild your partition table. After doing this, eject the
disk
and reboot. You should be able to reboot into Windows and access your
data."
Ben Moore
----------------------------------------------------------
On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 15:04:38 -0500 "Jason Arroyo"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Roger and the rest of you,
>
> This hard drive has a utility installed on it called "EZ Bios" that
> is
> some kind of disk boot utility, is that going to cause
> complications?
> It's a utility that Western Digital Caviars came with for a number
> of
> years.
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