Help with my old Sony Vaio

[RUSH2112]

My first laptop ever was my Sony Vaio F650, P3 600MHz, which was a Christmas gift back in 1999 ($2200 at the time). It has been rotating from under my desk to under my bed for the past two years or so, and I recently pulled it out and dusted it off. I slapped in some ram and a 20GB hard drive. Everything seems to work fine, except the hard drive reads as 7.7GB, and will not format when I try and install an OS. I checked the obvious stuff, all the connections are tight and all. Im pretty sure that the hard drive itself is not bad. It shouldnt be too new of a hard drive (Travelstar 20GB 4200 - Stock was a 12GB).

There are really no good Vaio forums, so I figure the off topic section here is the best place to ask.

[NS]

Since this forum is dedicated to thinkpad owners only... & since you wanted to look for a good and helpful Sony Laptop community, i will recommend you to go here: http://www.notebookforums.com/forum100.html

[Orevin]

Did you check for an BIOS update?

[AlphaKilo470]

Check to make sure you have latest BIOS, check the FAQ to see if this is a common issue (if an FAQ is available) and make sure the drive is set up properly in BIOS. It'd alsobe good to make sure the drive itself is good.

[epbrown]

There are really no good Vaio forums...

OUCH!!

Umm, I'm the list admin for the Sony 505 group, have been for about a decade, ran it using dial-up on my old IBM 560. There's a web forum for Picturebooks that's pretty active as well.

As for your question. I've got similar vintage VAIOs that have no problem with EIDE drives (as we used to call them). I'd look for a BIOS update, and verify that the BIOS is set to auto-detect drives rather than working from previously set up parameters.

[RUSH2112]

I've confirmed its not the hdd, my 100gb reads as 8.5GB and has the same problem.
I should correct myself too, there are no good Vaio forums *that I could find* I would like to know where this 505 group is (and I assume its not limited to 505's?)
I checked sony's site and couldnt find any bios updates, any further tips?

[epbrown]

No need to correct yourself, I was just being a pedant. The 505 list is on Yahoogroups now (http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/sony505/), but actually it is pretty limited to 505 models, though we've expanded from the original mandate to Z505s and X505s as well since I started the list. There was a forum like this one that supported all Sony laptops (The Unofficial Sony site) but I can't find it anymore; iirc, Sony was working to shut them down.

As for your drive problem, I think one solution is to create a partition under 8GB that the unit will see and work with, and then create one or more larger ones once you've got your OS installed.

[RUSH2112]

As for your drive problem, I think one solution is to create a partition under 8GB that the unit will see and work with, and then create one or more larger ones once you've got your OS installed.

No luck. It seems it has a problem trying to mount it after it partitions. I tried it with ext2, ext3, and ReiserFS. Is the drive just too new? BIOS reads it as 2824MB, the Linux parititioner as 7.7GB, when its really a 20GB.

Sony's site basically just had the drivers, no bios updates or anything like that. Do you know any good place to find them.

Ps, epbrown, the 505's are great machines. I've owned 3 or 4 of them, but the original 505 was the best if you ask me.