Older 939 Mobo's, the 137GB limit & NAS

[hexameta]

All-
Thanks for reading.
So I'm trying to get the most out of my older hardware and unfortunately have learned some stuff the hard way as it were I'm hoping that the title of my posting has illustrated my question. I'm wondering if any of you have experience with getting all of this to work. Specifically can older mobo's that do not have the capability to access HD's larger than 137GB (and yes I've flashed with the latest BIOS) read NAS devices with drives larger than 137GB. I'm gonna take a guess and say prolly not...
cheers------h

 

[MrLinux]

I very much doubt the BIOS on a 939 MoBo would be limited to 137Gig, any limit is probably down to the OS.

 

[macer1]

i have an old barton running as a file server " 2 tb of hd space"


no 939 board limits its HD size.

 

[Onus]

The problem is your version of Windows, not the board. My old S939 had a 250GB drive in it. Google is your friend on the patches and settings needed.

 

[Ijack]

You should have no problems reading from NAS drives with >137GB hard disks. Your motherboard is irrelevant here. as it isn't controlling the disk(s)

 

[hexameta]

Thanks for the responses which are pretty consistent but consider this:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;303013

Its a lengthy article so in particular I'm concerned with this excerpt out of it:
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By default, the original release version of Windows XP Home Edition and of Windows XP Professional do not have 48-bit LBA support. Your computer must meet the following requirements to use 48-bit LBA ATAPI support:
• 48-bit LBA-compatible BIOS.
• 137-GB hard disk or larger.
• You must have Windows XP SP1 installed.
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I'm running SP2 on an ASUS A8V-X made in '06. The A8V-X manual makes no specific mention of "48-bit LBA-compatible BIOS". The closest thing to it is "LBA/Large Mode" which had two options - Auto and Disabled. It was set to auto by default and I haven't changed this. I have also flashed the BIOS with the latest revision. The above MS article does talk about enabling 48-bit mode by:

setting "the EnableBigLba registry value to 1 in the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Atapi\Parameters\"

However this is true only in the original versions of windows. On a hunch I checked the registry and this key is not present. Again I'm running SP2. There's also the following comment in the article:

"If you enable 48-bit ATAPI support in the registry and you have a hard disk that has a capacity that is see comment than 137 GB, but you do not have a 48-bit LBA compatible BIOS, only the first 137 GB of the hard disk are addressable. The remainder of the hard disk is not used."

Couldn't really make out what the "see comment" part was about in the article but I'm gonna assume the that "see comment" = "greater". What do you guys make of all that?

thanks again!--------------------r

 

[hexameta]

Thanks ijack. So are you saying that if even if a mobo did not support 48bit LBA it would see a drive larger than 137GB if it was connected to a NAS?
thanks again-------r

 

[Ijack]

Certainly should do. The BIOS on the PC doesn't come into it as the OS on the NAS is controlling the disks, so that's the one that needs to be able to handle their geometry. The only limitations that you should see are those imposed by the OS - i.e. maximum file size, maximum path length, maximum number of files, things like that.