large drive support

[littleberry]

Is there a currnet "threshold" or "barrier" for
large sized hard drive support? Such as: (historically),
the first I got hit was way back then when my old
mboard wouldn't support over 450 megs; then, later,
I ran up agains the 32 gig barrier. I have a 440bx
and my largest drive right now is 80 gig, but, I
hear RUMORS that their is a new threshold around
120 gigs (or thereabouts). What about it?
Is there a way to know beforehand what is the
maximum sized harddive your given mboard will
support? (they never say anything about it in
the documentation - you find out when you
install the h/d and boot up - it will not
be recognized on POST).

Does anyone have experience here (440bx mboard)?

Thanks,

Littleberry

 

[Crashman]

I believe the next barrier is 127GB. I have pleanty of experience. Let me give you some good advice: Get an ATA133 card and put it in a PCI slot. If it's bootable (most are), you simply set your BIOS to boot off "SCSI", since BIOS treats IDE add-in cards as SCSI cards.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[littleberry]

Crashman,

I have never heard of an ATA133 card, but I will search
and read about that. Will this allow support for even
larger HD's (such as 160 and 240)? Does it come with
its own IDE connector? (So I will have a seperate
DMA-like channel? I could then have 3 master hd's
in my system)? Will this card work with an older
440bx mboard (Mine is the supermicro 440bx that
supported 1ghz PIII)? This sounds very interesting -
were there any "gotchas" that you ran into?
Do you have to install any software with this ATA133?

Also, if I decide to build (or purchase) a new
computer with a modern mboard, is there a way
to tell ahead of time which ones support the
over 167gig hd's?

I got a lot or reading to do, answer as much as
you don't mind answering - thanks,

Littleberry

 

[Crashman]

Wow, OK, let's go through this. IDE cards have been around forever, in fact motherboards didn't even used to have IDE controllers built in. For YEARS PCI-IDE adapters have been around, they have been available in ATA33/UDMA33, ATA66/UDMA66, ATA100/UDMA100, and now ATA133/UDMA133. When western Digital released their 200GB drives they originally included a card with the retail boxed version because few people had motherboards that supported this size.

These cards are a simple PCI card with an IDE controller by such well known brands as Promise, Highpoint, etc. Most have their own BIOS, just as a SCSI card would, which means they are bootable. Motherboard BIOS can't differentiate between IDE cards and SCSI cards, so you just set your motherboard BIOS to boot off SCSI.

The only gotcha I can think of is that these are bus mastering devices and shouldn't share an IRQ with another bus-mastering device. Which means if it doesn't work right in one slot, use a different slot. Also you'll need a copy of the driver disk to load windows on that drive.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[jammydodger]

I think the threshold is 137Gb not 127...not that the really matters, I just like to sound smart.

[Insert witty comment here]<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by jammydodger on 01/24/04 09:05 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[SoDNighthawk]

GUFFAW!!


sorry

Barton 3200+ 400MHz
A7N8X Deluxe
Liquid
2x512 Crucial DDR 400 PC3200
GeForce FX5900
Two Maxtor 40Gig 8MB cach 7200rpm
SONY RW 52x/24x/52x
SONY DVD 16x/40x

 

[Crashman]

Yes, I said 127GB. My calculater says 120GB actual is 128.8GB on the 10 based number system, so maybe it's actually 128GB?

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>