Compaq 7380DMT

[PROBLEMCHYLD]

I have partition a 30gb hard to 20gb and less, yet and still my comapq armada 7380dmt won't read it.

What can I do to solve this problem? I have the latest bios and updates installed.

Edited August 16, 2011 by PROBLEMCHYLD

[Ponch]

What does the BIOS see ?

What (device/ OS/ tool) do you boot from to partition the drive ?

[PROBLEMCHYLD]

The bios see's nothing. It wont boot at all. Its just a black screen

[Tripredacus]

That's quite an old system! Considering it comes with a 4GB drive.

Does that HDD work in another PC?

[Ponch]

Well, that's a bad start. Was it seeing the previous (smaller I suppose) HDD ? So, is the computer "known good" ? Is the drive "known good" ? Have you checked the jumper (if any, I reckon it's an old 2"5 IDE drive). If set to boot from HDD first, does it hang or boot next item (again, if any, floppy or cd).

[PROBLEMCHYLD]

That's quite an old system! Considering it comes with a 4GB drive.

Does that HDD work in another PC?

yes it does. I have tryed many different hdd. Anything over 20gb will not work on the compaq.

[allen2]

You could use a drive overlay (most hard drive makers did their own) and you may also need to create a small first partition. What is the make of the new hard drive ?

[PROBLEMCHYLD]

HITACHI

[allen2]

As Ibm hardrive became Hitachi, i think the tools for ibm drives should work.

Try disk manager 2000 (it should be able to install a dynamic drive overlay on your hitachi drive): the file you need is there.

If it doesn't work you can still try HFT (Hitachi feature tool) to reduce the size of the drive.

[Ponch]

About 11 years ago I also had to upgrade a 2Gig HDD in a Compaq Armada (1530 ??? 266MHz as well or even less). Compaq site was saying that up to 6Gig HDD was tested but my company sent me a 20Gig. I never got it to work. Bios was seeing 8Gig while partitionning programs (fdisk and Ranish PM) were seing something else. Whatever the size of the partition I was making, I could format it, make it active, but no boot. I ended up buying a 2nd hand 10Gig and it worked.

Anyway, as long as your Bios sees nothing (by the way, if I remember, Bios User Interface was on the HDD itself or to be ran from floppy), there is no software workaround.