I just purchased a ST2300 from E-bay. I bought one with a 40-gig drive in it (Toshiba) because I will be using it mostly for MP3s and moving map applications (including raster based moving maps - large files).
I have had a couple of catastrophic file system errors when copying files to the tablet from my home desktop over a network connection. The first time, basically all the folders created during file transfer were invalid. I attributed this error to me having several different folders being copied at the same time. I was able to recover by using scandisk to delete the invalid folder entries and the resulting lost chains. The second time, I was not so lucky. The FAT (or other essential area of the disk) must have been overwritten. I knew I was in trouble when I opened the "My Computer" icon during the file transfer and all I saw was gibberish text. When I cancelled the file copying process, I got an error similar to "Error loading explorer.exe, you must reinstall windows." When I rebooted, I got a blank screen with a flashing cursor. I have now re-fdisked, re-formatted, and re-installed Win98 and some software, but have not attempted a major network file transfer again.
My question is this: first of all, does anybody have any ideas why this happened? I am wondering if the fact that the bios doesn't recognize the true capacity of the drive has anything to do with it. Does copying files across a network access the disk in a fundamentally different way (using the bios somehow instead of the Windows file system)? Anybody else have trouble with large disks in these machines? Can anyone confirm that they have used a network to copy lots of files onto a tablet with a larger drive than is recognized by the bios?
Just to reassure myself, here is how I set up the IDE settings in the bios this time: I started the machine the first time with the reformatted drive (with Win98 CD, and drivers copied on to it). I went into the bios setup and the drive was set to autodetect. It showed a capacity of 8 GB. I changed it to "user-defined" and it kept the same values for cylinders, heads, etc. I set the bios option for "plug and play OS" to no, and the "secure setup values" (or similar) to yes. I didn't use any BIOS overlay software, although I have a copy of Maxtor's software somewhere.
Any ideas or guidance would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Dave
