There are several sets of circumstances that can return this status.
A. If the drive has not been partitioned (with FDISK) this message will be reported.
B. If the drive parameters (Cyl, Hd, Sec) set in CMOS DON'T match those of the drive this message will be returned indicating that the drive geometry read from the drive doesn't match what is entered in CMOS.
C. General hardware failure on the disk sub-system where the drive geometry cannot be read (causing the mismatch described in B). This could be a bad cable, misplaced cable (off by a pin or row) no DC power to the disk, bad disk PCB, incorrect jumpering on disk PCB. Any matter of problems that can cause the disk to be unreadable can return this error message.
NOTE!! On initial HDD install/upgrade I'd do a physical check on all the obvious things like cable placement, power connectors, listen to hear the disk seeking during it's POST test on pwr up. If this error occurs after the disk has been operating normally it is indicative of a failure of some type. May be hardware failure, or partition data may have been corrupted. This is NOT a good message to get from a working drive.
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