This may be due to a BIOS limitation of 33.8GB. When a hard drive of 40GB or greater is installed on certain models of legacy systems, the computer may lock up and/or the drive may not be detected. If this is your situation, you have 3 possible solutions:
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You can use the Alternate Capacity (AC) jumper if available. This will limit the capacity of the drive to 33GB and make the drive detectable by the BIOS. The draw back to this is you will lose the ability to access the remaining capacity of the drive as long as the jumper is in place.
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You can use a BIOS Extender card like those sold by Promise Technologies. This will allow the drive to be detected by the card avoiding any BIOS conflicts. The draw back to this solution is the added cost as well as having to install an additional card into your system. This is not difficult but some may feel overwhelmed at trying to add the card.
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You can update the systems BIOS. This is the most desirable solution as it is must only be peformed once and allows the system to function as it was intended. In most cases a BIOS update can be obtained for no charge from the motherboard or system manufacturer's web site. The drawbacks are that this is not always available and detailed instructions may not always be available.
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