basic question

[La_Magra]

Lads, got a very basic question about hard drives for ya. I want to upgrade an age old computer (has a cyrix 300Mhz CPU!) but i am worried that its old DMA 33/66 support may not be accepted by the new HD out now. Are these current HDs backwards compatible with the older PCs? If it helps i am upgrading Packard Bell Club 40B

 

[Crashman]

Yes, higher speed drives work at older standards. But your computer MIGHT have a drive SIZE limitation in BIOS. And that would require either a revised BIOS, a hacked BIOS, or a bootable IDE card. That assumes you don't want to use "drive overlay" which realy sux.

<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>

 

[La_Magra]

Drive overlay? not quite sure what that is. As far as BIOS is concerned, how do i go about obtaining and updating the BIOS for a Packard Bell Club 40B? I was thinking about just getting 20GB...

 

[Crashman]

Drive Overlay is a software that allows a drive that's manually set smaller in BIOS to be seen as larger by the OS. It loads at boot and makes your drive slower, less reliable, and harder to configure.

You can look at <A HREF="http://support.packardbell-europe.com/support/download/drv/CAT114.asp?c=ap" target="_new">Packard Bell's BIOS Page</A> for your model, their's probably another identification number on your system somewhere.

If you can't find any BIOS update information, I'd just buy the drive and try it. If it's too large for BIOS to autoconfigure, I'd buy an IDE card.

I wouldn't bother with a 20GB drive when they cost nearly as much as a 40GB drive, which cost nearly as much as an 80GB drive...so 80GB is about my lower limit for buying new drives.

<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>

 

[ecar016]

actually i wouldnt get a large drive...the larger the drive the more waste and the more expensive. Dont bother with bios updates for such an old system. get the cheapest drive available and write down its settings....sectors, heads etc... plug the drive in and set for lba...you might get it to recognize a portion of the drive. then just f-disk it and format. It'll work but you'll waste a portion of the drive unused.

EC


<font color=red> Quantum Computers! - very interesting </font color=red>

 

[Flinx]

If you are not interested in try to get one of the newer drives to work then you could always try a PC-Recyler in your area (town/city). They have two larger ones where I live and while u pay a bit of a premium (considerable) I would say, you don't have to worry about some of the problems you might have fitting some of the larger drives.

On the other hand the drives are used and smaller.

See if your motherboard has a problem with drives over (32MB Oops!) 32GB. Search the web with google.

The loving are the daring!<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Flinx on 09/11/03 08:43 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[jihiggs]

if his mobo only supports 32 MB hes got bigger problems lol.

wpdclan.com cs game server - 69.12.5.119:27015

 

[Flinx]

OOPS!!!!!!! :frown:

Sorry I meant 32GB


The loving are the daring!