9300 hard drive error unable to boot o/s

I would just mount the hard drive on a working computer and get the data off. It might still have your data and just not be bootable. Sounds like the hard drive is just about done though. Now if you have any experience with linux, you can just burn a live cd (or make a live usb) and try to get the data off that way.

Option 1 - Using another computer
The 9300 used both PATA and SATA hard drives depending on when it was made. So you would need an external enclosure that fits either a 2.5" PATA or 2.5" SATA. You can take the hard drive out and check either the connector or the model number to find out if its PATA or SATA. Once you have the external enclosure you just plug the hard drive in and connect the enclosure to another computer to try to get data off of it.

Option 2 - Linux
Get the Ubuntu Live CD (whatever version it is now).
Boot the computer, and press F12 on the BIOS splash to enter selective bootup.
Choose to boot from cd/dvd drive.
Start it up (there should be an option to just "try" the cd out)
Go to Places -> Computer
You should see one or more disk partitions here
Hopefully there will only be one and you can tell its the windows one. If there is more than one, then the biggest one is probably the windows partition.
Double click on the windows partition HD icon to mount it
If its not the right partition, then just go back and select another one.
Now use an external hard drive or flash drive to get the necessary data off.
Once its done, close all windows and look for ANY HD icons on the desktop. Be sure to unmount/eject them all before rebooting. Voila, you should have all your files.

*Also, if you choose to use a flash drive be sure to unmount it (right click on desktop icon and choose eject) before removing it from the computer.

I wouldnt trust the drive at all really. I would probably reinstall but I reinstall all the time so its not a pain to me.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...889&name=ATA-6

All the drives there will work. I stay away from fujitsu though since they seem to be overpriced (I havent checked recently).

Personally, I always use Gparted to partition my hard drive.

I belive the I9300 will only recognize a 137Gb disk.
I tried a WD 320Gb ATA6 drive with no love.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to make the two work together?

thanks
smk

You should be able to make it work. There are several methods. If you want to have just one large partitioned drive, the easiest method would be to use an external drive caddy and using any one of several commercially available "cloning" programs. Some even come free with new drives (mine did). The procedure is to boot-up with the cloning software CD and the new drive in the caddy, then following the procedure provided by the software formatting then copying your old drive onto the new one. When finished exchange the drives and you're good to go. Usually the hard drive manufacturer has available on it's website or provides with the drive not only the cloning application, but also software that will "trick" the BIOS so that it can overcome the BIOS limitation.

Another option is using your Windows installation disc to make a "clean install" to your new drive and just make sure that instead of partitioning and installing the entire drive that you create a partition smaller than the 137 gig limit. Your machine should then be able to recognize and boot-up normally. The extra space above the limit can then be formatted from within Windows. Windows treats that extra space as it would another drive, assigning it a letter etc... You can then use that for storage.

Of course there are other methods which you can easily research online (Google is man's best friend). My advice would be to first check with Western Digital and see what software solutions they've got available on their site and see if they've got something you can just download for free before buying anything and go from there. I hope this helps.

Ciao

The BIOS for 9300 including the latest A05 will only recognize 137GB. However, Windows XP SP2 or later (SP3, Vista, Windows 7) does NOT rely on BIOS for the HDD size. You can use the max (at the moment 320GB). I would recommend at least two partitions with the active/primary for the OS and Program Files and the rest for the data. Just be careful not to load any third-party tools at boot (including but not limited to Acronis, UBCD etc.)

Shame on Dell for not releasing a BIOS version which would support drives larger than 137GB. If they did we wouldn't have this discussion.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the reply.
I agree shame on Dell. So much for standing behind your product long term. At the rate that technology and products move along hardware is discontinued and new stuff is out long before the hardware fails and users move to the new stuff.

This was supposed to be an modular upgradable system. I had expected that Dell would have come out with new video cards especially one with 512 MB for Vista Areo, an 802.11N Wi-FI card and upgraded BlueTooth hardware and drivers.
They would have shown their customer base that the are standing behind then and could have gotten money out of them at the same time.

Ah well, such is life in todays fast pased world of techology.

My original XP install disks are not SP3 so what I did was to format it for 130G, install XP Media Center, then install the Service Packs and patches. When I have some time I will use one of the utillities like Partion Magic to expand the volume to the full disk size.
Things have been pretty busy and I may just wait for Windows 7 to ship and do the upgrade then.

regards
Steve K.

Don't! If your BIOS does not support hard disks larger than 137GB, you should keep the entire boot partition below the 137GB boundary.

When Windows starts to boot, it has to rely on the real-mode BIOS driver, which (in your case) cannot read anything above 137GB. During the boot process, Windows switches the CPU from 16-bit real-mode to 32-bit protected-mode, which means it needs a different driver. That second driver is supplied by Windows itself, and versions from XP-SP1 and later do not have the 137GB limitation. Once the boot process switches from real-mode to protected-mode, it has access to the entire disk and there are no problems. It's just the beginning, real-mode portion of the process that you have to be careful about.

If you use a single large (>137GB) partition, XP will still boot correctly as long as the files needed by the real-mode portion of the boot process are in the lower part of the partition and accessible to the BIOS driver. The problem is Windows constantly rewrites files, and sooner or later some file needed in the real-mode portion will end up in the upper part of the partition. When that happens, subsequent boot attempts will begin to crash.

To prevent that risk, keep the entire boot partition below 137GB. That guarantees that anything the real-mode portion needs will always be accessible.

Format the upper part of the disk as (one or more) separate data partition(s). You will have no trouble using that area once Windows has booted up.

BTW, Partition Magic is a 16-bit, DOS-based utility, even though it may install a launcher in Windows. It will use the BIOS driver. It should not be used on a hard disk the BIOS does not support, or data corruption may occur.

Oll Korrect.

Thanks for the advice.

Any idea how the latest Linux kernal works related to this issue?

Sorry, I don't know linux well enough to say.

I can't say how "the latest" Linux kernel deals with this BIOS issue, however I can say how 32bit OSes deal with it in general; that is as a previous poster mentioned in this thread. During the initial bootstrap process all X86 chips operate in 16 bit mode before later switching to 32bit. So the BIOS limitation will effect other OSes as well as Windows similarly. The work around is to partition your disk in such a way so that your "/" partition (and all other bootable partitions) are wholly contained within the 137gig boundary.

For example, I recently installed PCLOS Linux on my drive, I partitoned my 200gig drive so that the "/" was my first partition with 10 gigs dedicated to it, then my Windows partition 126gigs (so that it lies completely within the 137gig boundary) then I made a 3gig swap drive and used the rest for my "/home" partition. This gives me plenty of space for me to experiment with both OSes. Later on as I monitor my disk usage I can further customize and fine-tune my partitioning scheme.

I hope this helps,
Ciao

thanks, helps big time.
regards
Steve K