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max harddrive size for MX8738?

post #1 of 7
5/21/09 at 8:15pm
Thread Starter 
Picked up a 250 gig HD the other day with plans to swap it out for playing around with another operating system but maintain the ability to simply plug back in the drive that came with the laptop to not loose anything.

long story short, not recognized, installed in my desktop, ran XP setup in order to get it formatted, put back in laptop, still wont recognize it.

So I guess there is a limit on HD size it will see maybe? what is that limit? can I upgrade the BIOS to get past this?

thanks if you can give me a clue.
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post #2 of 7
5/21/09 at 10:39pm
Sata driver missing?

cheers ...
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post #3 of 7
5/21/09 at 11:12pm
Thread Starter 
I don't think that is the problem, but I am new at playing with laptops. I installed the new drive, boot up on my XP install disc, it says it's getting ready to install XP, then at the point where I think it normally starts copying files over to the HD it says, cant find hard drive. If I reboot without the CD in, it just sets there and never tells me anything... at least thats what it did yesterday before I pulled the drive and formatted it in my desktop
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post #4 of 7
5/22/09 at 2:18am
You need to make the disk (seen) available for XP during many stages of installation. For Sata drives, this can be done by turning off AHCI support in BIOS (if available), or by slipstreaming the driver onto the XP installation disk.

cheers ...
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post #5 of 7
5/22/09 at 8:18am
Thread Starter 
pulled my normal drive from my desktop, made the new 2.5" SATA 250 GB the only drive in it, XP install went off fine, laptop still doesn't see it or detect it at all. went back to desktop partitioned it into 2 smaller drives tried laptop again ... same result, didn't think that would work but thought worth a try. The BIOS in the laptop is pretty poor, not much in the way of changeable settings. Everything I can find for HD for the MX8738 stops at 160 gig. starting to think I may just end up having to get a smaller drive. oh well, have a extra 250 GB for my swappable docking station if I do I guess. not the end of the world.
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post #6 of 7
5/22/09 at 8:06pm
Try pressing f5 at start up, going into
"harddrive type" utility and switching them
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post #7 of 7
5/27/09 at 10:05pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by maelstrom99 View Post
Try pressing f5 at start up, going into
"harddrive type" utility and switching them

F2 takes me to BIOS not really anything in the BIOS on this machine as far as hard drive settings.
F10 takes me to bootmenu, where you can select boot from CD or HD, that's all I could find on the F keys.

Couldn't get F5 to do anything.
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