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[hit_ny]

was curious to know ppls experience with installing HDs bigger than 120GB in their machines and having it run fine ie BIOS recognising it for what the drive is.

I currently run 120Gb drives on a p3 700MHZ and was interested in upgrading to 160Gb ones.

What i'm not sure about is will i need a separate contorller card to get it to work in the system ie Promise. I have used Promise in the past with older boxes a P2, etc and it worked fine.

I seem to recall having read there was a certain limit re HD size something like 137Gb etc where the native BIOS seems to have problems etc.

Fire away folks !!!

[MrCC]

Hopefully you have a fairly recent motherboard, and it can understand > 137 Gb drives.
I use some of the Promise controllers, that helps any mboard/bios issues.  But watch the OS.  W2k at SP2 won't work with these drives, file corruption can occur.  Iif you have W2k SP4 it is OK.  I think XP is fine.
You can Google search for large hard drive support.

I have two Promise Ultra 133 TX-2 with 120 and 180 GB drives, works well.  Use both W2k SP4 and XP.

BTW, the W2k system was at SP2 and I installed the MS patch for the problem, that worked OK.  Then I installed a W2k SP4 fresh system as a long term solution.

[KingSparta]

About the time of the 700 mhz computers (i had one) max bios was 32 gigs unless it was made after sep 1999 or something like that.

most drives come with software that will basicly allow it to work on almost any computer, and has been around for years. I remember i had a 486 and the max was 500+ meg drive and then the 1 gig drives came out and it worked fine as long as i used the packaged software.

the best thing to do is call the people who made the computer tell them what the bios version, and bios date. and ask them if you will have a problem.

it also may depend on the OS your using since no versions of the OS will support large drives. there have been patches but windows XP supports very large drives and it even has a patch to allow for large drives.

I would look at a new computer rather than craming more hard drive into that 700 mhz box. Gateway and dell have some nice deals.

[zevele10]

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=305098

Check it
VERY VERY important.

If it is not set propely , the days your drive go beyond 137 , your hard drive EMPTYS

[JorgeGVB]

If you are running XP SP1 your large HD will be reconginzed.  SP1 corrected the large HD problem.

[xen-uno]

Hit...

I'm speaking from inexperience here...largest HD I've dealt with was 80 GB and I personally have (2) 60's in a RAID Level 1 array (in a Dell XPS T700r). Trivial though, would be the size of the drive if there isn't a BIOS update to support it. Does one exist and can it be flashed in?

Bios may not be an issue with the Adaptec ATA1200A RAID PCI card I have...no size limit is stated, only that they be ATA-66 or ATA-100 drives (ATA-133 & up should work). Motherboard BIOS isn't an issue since it is sidestepped in favor of the 1200's for the array. The OS, however, is another story (zev's link spells that out).

Call me biosed, but I would never buy just one drive that big without buying another...for use in a mirrored (at minimum) RAID array.

10^-27

[marketability]

I'm with Xen-Uno...

big disks full off precious music deserve a twin!  

After a few painful HDD failures lost a lot of painfully ripped vinyl    I invested in some 3ware RAID cards

a few advantages:
RAID 5 - more safety with less disks 4x120Gb gives you 360Gb
120gb disks are v cheap so you can build a large protected disk array

I have 12x120Gb in 3 RAID 5 arrays bult up over time so the bank manager didn't cry
means I can be lazy with compression, ie. fast APE and manage more zones with less CPU

[MrCC]

"big disks full off precious music deserve a twin!'

Or regular backups to another single drive...

I suppose if your music library is mainly lossless, and you have a lot of material, then your music will be on more than one/lots of large drives.  Then backing up single drives, and manageing the music across lots of drives, is quite an issue.

Implementing a RAID 5 solution (and recovering from a problem if a disk goes down) I would think is not for the faint hearted...

Usually this environment appears to be there for mission critical data that is changing real-time.  A music collection is more added to manually (giving time for backups to take place).

It must work for you, interesting.

[jleerigby]

I'm with Xen-Uno...

big disks full off precious music deserve a twin!  

After a few painful HDD failures lost a lot of painfully ripped vinyl    I invested in some 3ware RAID cards

a few advantages:
RAID 5 - more safety with less disks 4x120Gb gives you 360Gb
120gb disks are v cheap so you can build a large protected disk array

I have 12x120Gb in 3 RAID 5 arrays bult up over time so the bank manager didn't cry
means I can be lazy with compression, ie. fast APE and manage more zones with less CPU

Not much good if your house burns down or the burglars pay a visit.  All my data is backed up to an identical drive in a removable caddy and put in my drawer at work once a week.

[xen-uno]

Market...

We forgot our backup disclaimer...D'oh! (not that I practice it regularly enough...I bow to thee, JLee, CC)

10^-27

[AoXoMoXoA]

I keep a twin of my large nusic drive in a very safe place, in the bottom of the laundry hamper (DRY clothing only), under the dirty undies and smelly sox.  

[hit_ny]

Thx for the replies...i agree having a more modern machine would fix the problem but i inherited this box and it works well as a media server. Regarding bakup, my solution is ghosting the entire drive to another once a month. No need for incessant CD burning, ghost clones a 120GB drive in a hr which is fast enough for me.

All my data is backed up to an identical drive in a removable caddy and put in my drawer at work once a week.

I'm curious to know what brand of caddy you are using for this JLee ?


I understand that the 137Gb limit is due to 28-bit LBA addressing of hard drives. To support larger drives requires 48-bit LBA addressing.

This requires 3 things to work
- a 48 bit LBA aware BIOS
- or a controller card ( which would get around a BIOS that did not support 48-bit LBA)
- OS needs to be aware (running W2k, SP4)

From zev's link

- The operating system must be installed on the first partition that is smaller or equal to 137 GB when the EnableBigLba registry value is enabled but when you do not have a 48-bit LBA compatible BIOS.

If you enable the 48-bit LBA ATAPI support by editing the registry setting, but you lack both a 48-bit LBA compatible BIOS and a hard disk that has a capacity of more than 137 GB, the hard disk continues to function as a standard hard disk with an addressable limit of 137 GB.

- The operating system must be installed on the first partition that is less than or equal to 137 GB and the rest of the hard disk divided into one or more remaining partitions when the EnableBigLba registry value is enabled on a computer without a 48-bit LBA compatible BIOS that has a hard disk with a capacity of more than 137 GB.

What is not clear here is
- if i am NOT installing an OS on these drives but merely using them to store data, will the lack of a 48-bit incompatible BIOS limit the drive to 137GB ? or will i be fine provided i make the registry entry to recognise the big HD.

i found a link from Maxtor which sugggest 3 solutions.

The second solution interesting, using the Intel Application Accelerator . This refers to motherboards that have an intel PCI chipset ( which i disccovered that i  have, using this utility[/u] ). So i downloaded the intel program and installed it, things seem to work fine. No where in the second solution do they suggest that a 48 bit LBA BIOS is reqd. It would seem that installing this intel app which provides support for 48-bit LBA should be enough.

I am assuming that,  since i instaled this app, which upgrades the intel chip thats on the motherboard that i dont need to have a 48-bit LBA aware BIOS.  Intel seems to support this as well.


The problem with identifying whether the BIOS can support 48-bit LBA is that they require you to actually install the drive AND ONLY THEN run a DOS utitily that will check whether its ok. You cant check w/o the drive which seems crazy to me.

[marketability]

Not much good if your house burns down or the burglars pay a visit.  All my data is backed up to an identical drive in a removable caddy and put in my drawer at work once a week.

I'd love my life to be that simple! don't make me any more paranoid than I am already!!
unfortunately I have circa 825Gb of Music files and so backup is tricky
The stuff I ripped from Vinyl is backed up - too painful to lose

I dont download music so I gues ultimately my backup is the original CD! (I've goine all sweaty thinking of ripping it all again)

Implementing a RAID 5 solution (and recovering from a problem if a disk goes down) I would think is not for the faint hearted...

Its remarkably simple - creating the array is plug and play simple (I use 3ware cards)
rebuilding is also pretty simple as I have hotswap disks - just pull out the old disk, plug in the new one and the card rebuilds the array automatically