BIOS and hard drive size

[jamrock]

I am adding a few machines to my lab so I am in the processing of buying a few Pentium class machines. These are not production machines, so speed is not so important.

My big concern is the availability of replacement parts, especially hard drives.

How can I tell if a machine's BIOS will recognise a 20 GB hard drive? There is little point in buying a machine that will only use smaller hard drives unless it is seriously discounted.

Is there a rule of thumb that says that BIOS's dated after xx/xx/xx should support xx GB hard drives?

[tech_guru]

Basically all boards manufactured in the last couple of years should recognise drives larger than 8 GB........

If your board supports a P3 processor more than likely the BIOS will recognise drives larger than 8GB...........

This was a problem in the old days nowadays the problem is getting your BIOS to see you drives over 100GB ;D 8)

[matronyx]

I am adding a few machines to my lab so I am in the processing of buying a few Pentium class machines. These are not production machines, so speed is not so important.

My big concern is the availability of replacement parts, especially hard drives.

How can I tell if a machine's BIOS will recognise a 20 GB hard drive? There is little point in buying a machine that will only use smaller hard drives unless it is seriously discounted.

Is there a rule of thumb that says that BIOS's dated after xx/xx/xx should support xx GB hard drives?


I wouldn't use a rule of thumb in this regard, since some manufacturers are rather behind in time. I would suggest checking out the board's features on the manufacturer's site. In addition, check google to see if people are reporting excessive problems (keep in mind that every board has had a problem)

[deakie]

do you remeber how in the old days the new drives easily defeated the bios and OS size limits?
and the fixes that came about like ezdrive and a few other software fixes.
i believe the same applies today, where normally, you can just use some default setting in the bios, like auto and then the softy takes over by having a remapping of the mbr or summin.

so basically, no need to worry too tough if the drive is going to be too big. the drive manufacturers normally have utilities for these things on their sites. look for that when selecting the drive.

[kc4u]

Tronyx and Deakie say it all in a mouthful. Simply check the manufac. website for utils for the hard drive you aquire and the same is true for the mainboard. New updates and drivers will make a world O' difference!

[kknight]

Yep Tech_Guru is right...Most modern boards will detect it. If not you will need a bios upgrade or you will have to install the drive with a special app provd by the manufacturer. The drive also has alternate CHS (cylinder Head Sector) values that will fool the bios and allow the drive to be used.