Is there a way? HDD 80 Gig on an Old Computer

[Debbie]

Is there a way I can utilize a full HDD of 80 Gig on a machine that can take a max of 32 Gig ?

Will it work I partition the drive on another coputer first ?

Debbie

[agallag]

What brand of HD is it? Most manufacturers supply something called a Software Overlay, that lets an old bios recognize a new bigger drive.

Example, Maxtor provides "Maxblast 3" as either a floppy image or a CD image.

[Debbie]

Hitachi Deskstar
Mod. HDS728080PLAT20
Cap. 82.3GB

Made in China for Hitachi Global Storage Technoloies Inc.

[ayoub_ibrahim]

Suggest you get a cheap ATA PCI controller card. It will have its own BIOS and should easily accommodate hard disk capacities up to 127GB. It should also maximised the performance of that hard disk since it is most likely that your motherboard IDE controllers only supports a maximum of ATA 33.

[Debbie]

"ATA PCI controller card" Briliant ! That should work great.

Debbie

[Dr Mordrid]

I mostly use the Promise Ultra 133 card. Its BIOS uses 48 bit LBA which allows for drives >137g.

Dr. Mordrid

[Debbie]

This is what I found. "Adaptec ATA1200 IDE Raid Card"

Any comments about it?

Debbie

[agallag]

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#FeatureTool

[ayoub_ibrahim]

Nooooooooo!
You don't want a card with raid. You just want a plain 100 or 133 ATA PCI controller card such as one from Promise or Highpoint.

[Debbie]

I have had a look at the features of the Hitachi FeatureTool.

Correct me I I'm wrong, but it appears that this tool will limit the drive to suit the MOBO not "fool" the BOBO to take a larger capacity HDD.

In this case the HDD has a cliping jumper to limit it to 32GB

Debbie

[agallag]

You are correct. I misread that page. The maxtor one is valid, but it looks like there's nothing available for Hitachi.

There is a product that covers all brands of hard drives, Ontrack Disk Manager, but it costs $59.95. When IBM made Deskstars, they came with an IBM specific version of the Ontrack software. I guess they don't do that anymore.

If you can find an IDE controller for less than that, go for it, otherwise this is an alternative.

[Debbie]

What I found is a Raid controler.

It should be better than just an ATI Controller since it will allow me to use the drive as primary master. I can always use the Raid Controller on my other computers, should the emergency arise.

I will also have a look at the Ontrack software and see what's it like.

Thanks for your help guys.

Debbie

[High_Jumbllama]

If the motherboard can boot to a SCSI controller, it will work with these cards. That's what works on the second machine in my sig. Just use that in place of IDE0 or whatever your machine has for using the motherboard controller.

[Debbie]

I have been trying to boot from a diskette but CMOS freezes when a large HDD is connected.
This rules out a sotware soluton, like Ontrack Disk Manager.
Am I right ?

Debbie

[Dilitante1]

to use those disk manager proggies, you need to set in the BIOS the heads,cylinders/sectors to what it tells you to, then you can run the program