You know those times when you want to throw a computer out of a window? I'm having one of those times... have been for more than a month with this thing.

I'm trying to upgrade the hard drive on this Sony Vaio PCG-705 laptop from a 2GB to a 20GB (for a friend... of course). NOTHING seems to work. I can't even boot from the recovery CD when this drive is installed. I've tried every method of partitioning, i've used phdisk that is required for the stupid hibernation partition, i've tried tricking it into thinking it's a different drive through drive swapping... it's really driving me insane. I can't find a single reason why it shouldn't boot from the CD when this drive is installed. Even if the BIOS has a problem with a drive this large... shouldn't it not care as long as it's only partitioned for 2GB?

I just don't get it, and i feel like an ass because i told this guy the drive would work fine so he's paid for it, and i'm at my wits end after wasting WAY to many of my precious hours on this thing. Hopefully one of you magic workers has dealt with this before? ANY help insanely appreciated!

IDE limitations are not based on partition size, but the overall drive size. Sounds like the laptop will be unhappy with anything larget then 8gb, and even possibly as low as 4gb.

source

argh. that would explain it then. I guess i was hoping otherwise since i see companies selling 20 gig drives and stating they are compatible with that model. Ah well. Maybe there was a BIOS upgrade... or would that limitation be in hardware? Looks like i'm having the 2GB Bios limit problem.

Maybe there was a BIOS upgrade... or would that limitation be in hardware?

If there was a problem with hard disk size, then a BIOS upgrade would almost certainly fix it, if there is one. However, as I'm sure you've found, Sony's after-sales support is abysmal.

Yeah... apparently "i'm not supposed to upgrade a Vaio Laptop" according to their support. I'm pretty sure i've got the newest BIOS, i'll double check tonight. Thanks guys.

If this doesn't work i might have a 20 gig drive for sale soon. =]

You didn't mention it, but I assume that you have checked that 'boot from CDROM' is actually enabled in the bios? Will it boot from CDROM with the old disk?

Yes, it boots fine from CDROM and floppy with the original hard drive in it. I even went so far as to boot it from CD with the original drive, then hot swap to the new drive, and run the recovery with format, which it happily did. But when i reboot, i get a "no OS installed" line of text and nothing. Myst be the BIOS problem. Argh.

I wonder if the BIOS uses a small EIDE partition on the HD (like some Compaqs do). If it doesn't see that partition you get no farther? Can you look at the original HD with some disk tools on another machine to see what the partition structure is? Most of the ones I've seen are pretty small (perhaps 20MB max).

edit: Also, can you use disk copying utility (ghost, Maxblast or the like) with the two laptop drives hooked to a desktop machine? Then you could create or extend the root partition (as you desire) w/Partition Magic or the like. Can you 'see' the new drive (ie it shows up w/the correct size) from the BIOS setup screens? That at least would tell you if it's a BIOS limitation or not. If BIOS 'sees' the new drive, try to clone the original onto the new drive and take it from there.

-Zeke

I was under the impression that in some cases after control passed from the BIOS to the OS that the 8gb limitation didn't apply: you lie to the BIOS and as long as what you boot (the actually code you load and jump to from the BIOS) was within that "fake" geometry, it would work.

Not always, it depends what the actual problem is, but IIRC my sister's laptop had this problem when I upgraded her to a 20gb disk and put XP on it.

Even if the laptop (or its disk drive) doesn't have this to begin with, you can always add a drive manager to it that allows the larger hard disk. You can sometimes download these drive managers right from the drive manufacturer's web site. For example, I think the Maxtor version of the drive manager is called "MaxBlast".

Whether the drive manager is done via a hidden partition or via a replacement boot sector depends on the individual implementation, I think.

Sure. As long as it's not the problem I had when I put 40gb drives in certain old machines and the BIOS hung the machine

(Those drives had "fake being a 36gb drive" jumper but I have newer drives that don't)

Did you recreate the hibernation partition? My old PCG-305 went fruity without it and would refuse to boot up properly. I replaced the built in 6GB drive with a 20GB and I never had any major issues with it. It should still be working fine as I've not heard anything from my friend.

do you remember if you had to run Disk Manager or a similar translation utility? If farking Toshiba had a licensed download of it i could get this done, but they seem to be the only freaking drive maker that doesn't provide it. Grrrrrrr