Large HDD on an older laptop?

[orange400]

Just recently I got my 1.4GB Toshiba MK1401MAV HDD from an eBay-er, but my laptop isn't accepting it. My laptop is an Altima Traveler, which is a variation off of Twinhead's Subnote. It's a 486/SL-25 system. I'm upgrading from a 120MB drive. It can't autodetect the 1.4 gig, and when I put the cyl,head,sec and stuff in it manually, it still doesn't recognize it. Is there a way to get this lapper rolling with the newer hard drive?

Thanks all!

 

[stompah]

Is the new HD functional?

 

[orange400]

Yep. I plugged it into my overclocker with a hard drive adapter and it worked fine.

 

[Cyrix_2k]

You might need to fool the lappy into thinking it's a smaller drive by enetring in false info such as the heads,cylinders, ses, write pre-comp, etc. I used to fool around on older machines alot and I remember having to do this. You will lose some space, though.

 

[stompah]

Well I a pretty sure I got a 1.2g HD to work in an IBM 755cs 486 laptop. I cant verify that now since when I swapped the HD into the laptop it sounds bad.

I never installed Windows on that hard drive so I its fuzzy whether or not the laptop recognized the hard drive.

 

[orange400]

I've been playing around with the settings and so far no luck at all. I even set the paramaters to my old hdd and nothing either.

 

[orange400]

Maybe I should try to trade it for a smaller one at a used computer store?

 

[Robbie]

Goto the manu's web site and see if they have tools to make the drive compatable with older systems!!!
Rob

 

[orange400]

Well, so far here's what I found:

http://sdd.toshiba.com/cda/main.aspx?Path=/8181000002a0000000010000659c00000000

What does LZ and Pre mean? It's in my BIOS

 

[Robbie]

LZ is the Landing Zone,

LZ is the area that the heads come to rest when the power to the drive is shut off. This is to prevent the heads from stopping in an area of the hd that could contain data. If the heads did stop in an area with data they might distroy the data and the media in that area. (when a hd is on and running the heads DO NOT touch the media they ride on a very thin film of air, this air is produced from the spinning of the disk.)

Does that help with LZ?

I forget what Pre is for.
Rob

 

[orange400]

Whoa, that's what LZ stands for? That's really neat! I had this real old as-is-style hard drive that had huuuuge problems, so I opened it up for kicks. It had two obvious rings on the discs, probably from an invorrectly set LZ value.

 

[Xaotic]

Your best shot is a BIOS update, this will normally resolve many issues. The next best thing would be a Dynamic Drive Overlay to make use of the disk. Some information is here:

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/bios/overDDO-c.html

As to where to get one, try contacting the HDD manufacturer. I tried to locate a DDO using their website and had no luck, perhaps an email might work better.

 

[almondboy72]

hm upgrading on a laptop just upgrade whole laptop

 

[orange400]

Nah, this 486 is like my project man! I've owned it for about 5 months and the 486 is my favorite series of computer cpus believe it or not! 486s have just enough power to do some great things like word processing, dos games, windows 95 (sometimes 98 too), but the best part: Myst! Most of the 486 lineup will run Myst quite nicely. If you guys haven't played Myst before you're missin out!

This lapper is truly a rockin machine now. So far I have a 10/100 NIC, a PCMCIA-powered CD-ROM, a 4MB memory module expansion, a PS/2 splitter, 4500mAh batteries (will go about three days nonstop without a charge!), an optional internal modem ... now that's 486 power!! Old computers are an interest to me because most of the time they're free or really cheap. I like to build them and make them do their peak potential. I even case mod 'em!

Looks like I'm gonna head over to Seattle where they have a used computer shop called RE-PC ... they will most definately have something large that will work. No doubt they'll accept a trade of a 1.4GB Toshiba for something smaller. I kinda feel sad to let this gem go, but if it works out, it's a win-win situation.

 

[Robbie]

Looks like I'm gonna head over to Seattle where they have a used computer shop called RE-PC ... they will most definately have something large that will work. No doubt they'll accept a trade of a 1.4GB Toshiba for something smaller. I kinda feel sad to let this gem go, but if it works out, it's a win-win situation.

RE-PC is a really neat place. I went there Both times I went to CampAOA. They had all kinda of old cool stuff (and new stuff too) I ended up picking up a new HSF for Patti (Daniel's wife) while I was there for $20.

One of the AOA members got a REALLY nice deal on a really good case.
Rob