I'd say it's highly likely that the drives are too big yes. Chances are it's limited to 4GB.

I don't know if size is an issue, it is possible of course, but have a look at the bottom of the disk. There is no chance whatsoever for a common IDE drive not to have a way of selecting master/slave. I'd put my money on small jumpers on the pcb side of it 😉
Their existence doesn't necessarily mean of course that it will solve your problem, but at least you'll rule out a wrong master/slave setting.

Btw, I tried 520Mb Hdd - still the same thing. Does not boot, fdisk does not recognize it.
What else I can do?

Maybe try a Promise UltraATA/66 controller? That's what I did with my Gateway 2000 P5-75.

Artex wrote:

Maybe try a Promise UltraATA/66 controller? That's what I did with my Gateway 2000 P5-75.

Probably the best idea. As it's old hardware, I guess it's not impossible that the controller may have suddenly failed.

Maybe do a zero fill on the drives first before placing them, some bad partition data may cause trouble. and or do a real clear cmos and do some new bios setting not using large settings for hdd detections.

OK guys. I just tried all my HDD with that Gateway2000. All of them failed, except:
- Conner CFS210A (685 CYL, 16 HDS, 38 SEC, 210Mb)
- Caviar 22000 (3876 CYL, 16 HDS, 63 SEC, 2000.3Mb)
Rest failed:
- Seagate ST3660A (545.5Mb)
- Maxtor N256 (6000Mb)
- WD800 (80GB)
- Hitachi HDS7280 (80GB)

What is going on?
Settings in Bios? Or really hdd must be <4gb, but in that case it didn't recognized that 0.5GB seagate.

I just fixed this problem with my Hitachi Microdrive twenty minutes ago. It was driving me crazy. In the BIOS, I turned off the "auto" settings for the hard drive (highlight the hard drive model and click enter) and then disabled Ultra DMA in the following menu. Was able to use FDISK and format.

I don't see settings like that in my Bios (Amibios 1.00.03 BS0T)
When I choose a Hard Disk C: (Not Installed) I have following options:

1Hard Disk Type User Definable
2Number of Cylinders 0
3Number of Heads     0
4Number of Sectors   0
5Maximum Capacity    0
6
7Installation Timeout - Disabled
8
9IDE Translation Mode      - Auto Detect
10Multiple Sector Settings  - Auto Detect
11Fast Programmed I/O Modes - Auto Detect

Maybe I should update the Bios? Again it is

1AMIBIOS (C) 1992 American Megatrends, Inc.
2BIOS Version 1.00.03.BS0T

I'm not sure what board Gateway2K P5-90 has (I think my Processor was updated to p120) but can you tell me how to update it?

Perhaps I should just buy another Caviar 2200 on ebay