I also have the following response from Compaq. If this is correct,
can the BIOS be upgraded?

---- Original Mesage ----

Thank you for writing back to us.

The BIOS in the system only first detects the hard drive attached to the
motherboard. The system BIOS in the Presario 4410CA is designed to
support a maximum of 60 GB. If you install a hard drive with higher
capacity there is possibility that the system may not detect the hard
drive.



"K. Wing Wong" wrote:

Hello I have a Compaq Presario 4410CA, with a 40GB hard drive running
windows XP home. I have thinking of adding another hard drive to
the machine. I am thinking of another 40GB or 80 GB. I have been
searching the web for models and pricing etc. At the moment I am
leaning towards a Western Digital 80GB JB, because of its 8MB
buffer. But looking at the specs it says something about 48-bit LBA
addressing, and in one article that I read, you will need a
separate controller for those motherboards that don't have native
LBA support:

http://www.storagereview.com/article...D2000xB_1.html

The above review is for a 200GB drive, but the specs should be
similar for an 80GB drive. I reason that I favour this drive, is
because of its price (approx CAN $110), and my needs.

So I emailed Compaq support for advice. I got a response from them
saying that my PC can only support a total of 60GB, and they provided
part numbers for 20GB disk drives.

I find this quite strange, as the OS should only care about space on
a particular drive, or a drive partition. I don't understand why there
should be a limit on the total amount of drive space.

I understand LBA is only necessary for OS/MB that don't support a drive
larger than 137 GB.

Can anyone tell me if I can safely add an 80GB drive to my PC?

Thanks.

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kwong (at) nbnet (dot) nb (dot) ca
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