I have an old motherboard...THXPro II...and a 40GB Seagate HDD
so when I try to detect the HDD in BIOS it says that its an 8GB HDD,
any help on what I can do ?

Updated bios from the motherboard maker or a custom bios seller will be required that supports large hard drives. Check the website of your motherboard maker for bios update availability. If no bios update is available that supports large hard drives, then you must use drive management software from Seagate. You can visit the Seagate website for that software (it's free).

Further information about who made your motherboard can be found on the link below:

http://www.wimsbios.com

I have an old motherboard...THXPro II...and a 40GB Seagate HDD
so when I try to detect the HDD in BIOS it says that its an 8GB HDD,
any help on what I can do ?
as JERRY.K has said also as a alternative partistion your hdd into 2 (or 3?) smaller logical drives! useing fdisk it worked for me.

I dont think it's your motherboards fault, i just think you strapped the hdd wrong, i got the same problem with my brand new motherboard and it said that my 160 gb hdd was just like 100 gb,

I dont think it's your motherboards fault, i just think you strapped the hdd wrong, i got the same problem with my brand new motherboard and it said that my 160 gb hdd was just like 100 gb,


I think it is the M/Boards fault - many older M/Boards can only 'read' 8GB of the drives no matter how big it is.

DOS LBA software (such as Segate Ontrack) can 'fool' the BIOS into seeing a bigger drive.

As Jerry K said, a BIOS update would be the most feasible.

Many large drives have a jumper on them labelled 'Limit drive capacity to xxGB', normally this xx value is 32GB, which was the limit for many motherboards. Try putting this jumper on, and you may get more....worth a tyr.

My understanding is that many older BIOS chips cannot see a disk of more than 8 Gbytes. My 1997 HP Vectra has the same problem, even with the latest - and final - BIOS update. This has nothing to do with the 1024 cylinder limit of even older BIOS chips or the 2 Gbyte limit of FAT16. Disk remapping utilities like EZ-drive don't help and neither does splitting the disk into smaller partitions. By all means look for an update for your BIOS but if that doesn't work then you're out of luck.

My understanding is that many older BIOS chips cannot see a disk of more than 8 Gbytes. My 1997 HP Vectra has the same problem, even with the latest - and final - BIOS update. This has nothing to do with the 1024 cylinder limit of even older BIOS chips or the 2 Gbyte limit of FAT16. Disk remapping utilities like EZ-drive don't help and neither does splitting the disk into smaller partitions. By all means look for an update for your BIOS but if that doesn't work then you're out of luck.

This is the TXPRO II chipset not the THXPRO II, better look again at the chipset, however here is the info on the TXPRO II, its a PcChips board, and it is a old one!
TXPRO II

Used in
M567 (embedded 64 bit VGA chip)
M571 (onboard sound PCI, embedded 64 bit VGA chip)
M596 (3 PCI, 512 KB L2, Sound)
S593 (no slots, 1 DIMM, LAN)
BIOS Numbers:
51-1120-001437-00111111-071595-TXPROII_007_66_TXPROII-H: PcChips (model: ???)
51-1227-001437-00111111-071595-571-007_66_571-H: PcChips M571
TXPRO II is a relabeled SiS 5597/8
Picture M567
Note that the M571 is also being sold under the following names: Eurone EM-5571. THESE BOARDS ARE IDENTICAL TO THE PCCHIPS M571
You can use SiS Busmastering IDE drivers.
M571LMR: BAT TXpro-II board, 2 DIMM, no SIMM, 3 PCI, 2 ISA, PCnet and 8738 chips. 83 MHz max, 512 KB L2 cache

As you can see its a relabeled chipset, PcChips was famous for it!
It would be helpfull if you would post the bios string!

I have found if your system will boot with the drive attached, you can usually get it to work by setting the jumpers as mentioned before to their "alternate configuration" (ex. ,most newer WD use no jumper for sigle master, but TWO jumpers in positions 2 and 3 I think for alternate config) check http://www.seagate.com/support/ts/ata/hardware/01_jumper.html
and use the "limit drive position" setting

Description of Seven Major BIOS Limitations:

1. Systems with BIOS dated prior to July 1994(504 MB Limitation).
Typically these BIOS will have a 504 megabyte (1,024 cylinder) limitation. Prior to this date, most manufacturers' BIOS did not provide the Logical Block Address (LBA) feature needed for proper translation. Some BIOS had LBA mode in the setup, but the feature did not work properly.

2. Systems with BIOS dated after July of 1994 (2.048 GB Limitation).
Typically, these BIOS provide support for hard drives with capacities larger than 504 megabytes. However, depending on the manufacturer's release date and version number, different limitations may be encountered. The major limitation that surfaces is the 4,093-4,096 cylinder limitation. This barrier is derived from the fact that some BIOS manufacturers implemented Logical Block Addressing (LBA) translation in their BIOS with a 4,093 - 4,096 cylinder limitation. System hangs would occur when the cylinder limitation threshold is exceeded. A system hang is defined when the operating system hangs during initial loading, either from floppy diskette or existing hard drives. If these symptoms of system hang occur or there are questions whether the system BIOS will support the drive, contact the system or motherboard manufacturer for assistance.

3. 4.2 GB Limitation.
The maximum parameters at the 4.2 GB barrier are 8,190 cylinders, 16 heads and 63 sectors for a capacity of 4.2 GB. A system hang is defined when the operating system stops responding during initial loading, either from floppy diskette or existing hard drives. This can be caused by the BIOS reporting the number of heads to the operating system as 256 (100h). The register size DOS/Windows 95 uses for the head count has a capacity of two hex digits. This is equivalent to decimal values 255. If these symptoms of system hang occur or there are questions whether the system BIOS will support the drive, contact the system or motherboard manufacturer for assistance.

4. 8.4 GB limitation.
The maximum parameters at the 8.4 GB barrier are 16,383 cylinders, 16 heads and 63 sectors for a capacity of 8.455 GB. To go beyond this boundary, a new extended INT 13 function is needed from the BIOS as a support feature for the drives. The BIOS listed below are all "CORE" BIOS that will support drives larger than 8.4 GB. Even though a BIOS is dated correctly or is the current version, it may not be able to support extended interrupt 13 because of modification done to the "CORE" of the BIOS from the motherboard manufacturer.

5. 32 GB limitation.
This condition is caused by the Award BIOS inability to address hard drives greater than 32GB. Award has been made aware of this issue and has fixed their "core" BIOS as of 6/99. They are passing this information along to the motherboard manufacturers' that use their BIOS. Updates for the BIOS should be available soon from individual motherboard manufacturers' to correct this problem. The following are options to overcome the 32 GB BIOS capacity barriers:
· Please contact your motherboard manufacturer, not Award, for a BIOS update.
· (Recommended) Purchase a PCI ATA controller card that will support the capacity of the drive. The two benefits of ATA controller cards are: (1)the ability to support large capacity drives and (2) the ability to support the faster transfer rates of the drive. Maxtor's online store, www.MaxStore.com, has a complete selection of ATA controller cards that support the full capacity of all Maxtor drives.
· Or use MaxBlast 3 "Set Drive Size" utility. Please reference Answer ID: 1361

6. 64 GB Limitation
There is no 64GB BIOS Capacity Barrier. If you use FDISK to format a drive that is larger than 64 GB, FDISK will report the incorrect disk size. Please refer to Answer ID 775 for a resolution.

7. 137 GB Limitation

Most system BIOSes are limited to 137 GB because it can only support 28 bit Logical Block Addressing (LBA).

Say, you know Promise makes PCI cards that will solve your problem, I have one on my old machine and it works great. Do a search on EBAY for a PROMISE PCI Controller UDMA 100 and that should hook up your machine to the hard drive as well as make it work full speed making yourold machine new again!

After having worked on these things for years I can tell you from a great deal of hair pulling that those older PCChips boards do not like to flash. Do not risk a dead board, because the manufacturer used inconsistent quality parts! Buy a promise card. Usually , these cards are sold under many different names, but I have found that Maxtor makes a very good card, and "sees" anything short of a 200+ GIG monster drive, that I have always suggested people stay away from. Also, with a promise card, no matter who the manufacturer, you will find that your ancient processor comes back to life and probably performs better than you could ever have imagined. The reasoning for this? Processors have always been faster than we have been able to get data to and from them, so they are bottlenecked by storage solutions that were severely lacking in their heyday. Good luck, and if you can't find one you want, one of my suppliers builds their own cards, including ATA100, ATA133, SATA150, RAID,0 through 5 and SCSI, controller cards. It's not much of a website yet, but the contact info is correct. http://www.thecomputershack.com
Good luck,
Mike

Ok it sounds like time to upgrade the motherboard, Processor and memory. Look for around a couple hundred bucks you can join the 21st century. Prices are way down and now is a good time to upgrade. It should only take about 1 hour to upgrade that includes reinstalling windows and for the money its worth the time.

I dont think it's your motherboards fault, i just think you strapped the hdd wrong, i got the same problem with my brand new motherboard and it said that my 160 gb hdd was just like 100 gb,

I had the same problem with my 160 GB hdd but I found out that Windows only recognises 120 GB so you will have 2 partition it in to 2 drives or more