It's inconceivable that you got that part about the 137 gig limit right.

Windows XP "out of the box" does not support drives over 137 gigs, not
even with SP1 installed. But you can enable such support by installing
SP1 AND by making a registry entry (all of this is detailed on the MS
web site).

For such support to work, there has to be some support in the BIOS also.
It's just inconceivable to me that any current production Intel
motherboard would not have this, however.

Regardless, the limit is specific to IDE devices and does not apply to
Serial ATA drives or SCSI drives (in this regard, note that IDE drives
connected to a PCI disk controller card are seen and treated as SCSI
drives by the BIOS and operating system).


Ray Mitchell wrote:
Hello Everyone,

I just purchased an Intel D865PERLL motherboard because I had heard they
made the most reliable and compatible boards on the market (but definitely
not the fastest!). However, to my surprise I have found that they do not
support drives over 137GB, even on the SATA-150 channels (unless I'm missing
something). So, I will return it.

I would like some recommendations from people based upon their experiences
if you don't mind. I'm not a gamer and the most important consideration is
stability and compatibility rather than blinding speed and tweakability. I
already have an Intel P4 2.8C processor, 2ea. 512MB matched DDR-400s, and a
WD 200GB SATA-150 HD. The following are my requirements, which I believe
are fairly standard:

1. Intel chipset - 865 or later
2. 800MHz FSB
3. Dual channel DDR-400
4. BIOS support for 200MB/250MB SATA and ATA drives
5. 5ea PCI slots
6. 1ea 4X-8X AGP slot
7. On board LAN and USB

Of course, I would welcome additional on board peripherals such as firewire
(but on board video is not a plus for me since I plan to use a separate
2-head nVidia AGP card and nVidia PCI video card for 3-monitor support).

Thanks for your help,
Ray Mitchell