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Can I add a 160Gb harddrive?



 
 
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  #1  
Old August 22nd 04, 10:47 AM
Boenospam
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default Can I add a 160Gb harddrive?

to a 7000US system and of course get the full 160Gb (beyond the 137Gb 37
bit limit)? I understand a system needs to have LBA Addressing support,
but I cannot determine if mine has that or not. I've looked at all the
diagnostic reporting tools I could find and went through all the BIOS
settings and displays, but nothing.

Also, if I can get the hardware to recognize it, will WinME handle it
with FAT32? If not, what XP file system should I be looking at?

  #2  
Old August 22nd 04, 10:53 AM
HH
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

I doubt a Jan 2001 release PC would have the necessary 48-bit LBA to allow
installation of a drive larger than 127GB, not 137GB, as you noted. You're
probably limited to the 120GB drives.
HH

"Boenospam" wrote in message
m...
to a 7000US system and of course get the full 160Gb (beyond the 137Gb 37
bit limit)? I understand a system needs to have LBA Addressing support,
but I cannot determine if mine has that or not. I've looked at all the
diagnostic reporting tools I could find and went through all the BIOS
settings and displays, but nothing.

Also, if I can get the hardware to recognize it, will WinME handle it
with FAT32? If not, what XP file system should I be looking at?




  #3  
Old August 22nd 04, 11:20 AM
Boenospam
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

Thanks HH. It also seems like Compaq is not offering a BIOS upgrade to
this system that does support LBA .

1. So what if I upgrade to XP - does that have native 48 bit LBA
regardless of my BIOS or IDE controller?

2. It appears that Seagate offers this DDO (Dynamic Drive Overlay).
From what I can best tell, it gets around the lack of LBA support in
the BIOS, but I'm still confused about the Win ME OS in this case. Any
ideas?

3. Would buying a ATA PCI controller card fix the problem for LBA
support without any other changes?


HH wrote:

I doubt a Jan 2001 release PC would have the necessary 48-bit LBA to allow
installation of a drive larger than 127GB, not 137GB, as you noted. You're
probably limited to the 120GB drives.
HH

"Boenospam" wrote in message
m...

to a 7000US system and of course get the full 160Gb (beyond the 137Gb 37
bit limit)? I understand a system needs to have LBA Addressing support,
but I cannot determine if mine has that or not. I've looked at all the
diagnostic reporting tools I could find and went through all the BIOS
settings and displays, but nothing.

Also, if I can get the hardware to recognize it, will WinME handle it
with FAT32? If not, what XP file system should I be looking at?






  #4  
Old August 22nd 04, 11:44 AM
Tom Scales
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default


"Boenospam" wrote in message
m...
Thanks HH. It also seems like Compaq is not offering a BIOS upgrade to
this system that does support LBA .

1. So what if I upgrade to XP - does that have native 48 bit LBA
regardless of my BIOS or IDE controller?


No


2. It appears that Seagate offers this DDO (Dynamic Drive Overlay). From
what I can best tell, it gets around the lack of LBA support in the BIOS,
but I'm still confused about the Win ME OS in this case. Any ideas?


Works, slowly


3. Would buying a ATA PCI controller card fix the problem for LBA support
without any other changes?


Yes



HH wrote:

I doubt a Jan 2001 release PC would have the necessary 48-bit LBA to
allow
installation of a drive larger than 127GB, not 137GB, as you noted.
You're
probably limited to the 120GB drives.
HH

"Boenospam" wrote in message
m...

to a 7000US system and of course get the full 160Gb (beyond the 137Gb 37
bit limit)? I understand a system needs to have LBA Addressing support,
but I cannot determine if mine has that or not. I've looked at all the
diagnostic reporting tools I could find and went through all the BIOS
settings and displays, but nothing.

Also, if I can get the hardware to recognize it, will WinME handle it
with FAT32? If not, what XP file system should I be looking at?








  #5  
Old August 22nd 04, 01:09 PM
terry_b17
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

hi ,
you should be able to partition and format the disk for win me with
the utilities available from the manufacturer of your drive . the
controller card will offer better performance than the ddo software .
if you don't have an available pci slot the ddo software does work .
I am running western digitals version on my system . i was able to
partition and format my 120 gb drive with 98 using their utility .
hope this helps,
terry

==============
Posted through www.HowToFixComputers.com/bb - free access to hardware troubleshooting newsgroups.
  #6  
Old August 22nd 04, 04:23 PM
Ben Myers
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

For the long haul, you are 1000% better off with an ATA PCI controller card than
mucking around with DDO or similar software kludges. I've had a system here for
service with WD's EZ-Drive (like DDO) installed. What a pain in the butt to do
something so simple as reinstall Windows! Invest the $30 or so in the short
term to save many dollars and headaches in the long term... Ben Myers

On Sun, 22 Aug 2004 10:20:14 GMT, Boenospam wrote:

Thanks HH. It also seems like Compaq is not offering a BIOS upgrade to
this system that does support LBA .

1. So what if I upgrade to XP - does that have native 48 bit LBA
regardless of my BIOS or IDE controller?

2. It appears that Seagate offers this DDO (Dynamic Drive Overlay).
From what I can best tell, it gets around the lack of LBA support in
the BIOS, but I'm still confused about the Win ME OS in this case. Any
ideas?

3. Would buying a ATA PCI controller card fix the problem for LBA
support without any other changes?


HH wrote:

I doubt a Jan 2001 release PC would have the necessary 48-bit LBA to allow
installation of a drive larger than 127GB, not 137GB, as you noted. You're
probably limited to the 120GB drives.
HH

"Boenospam" wrote in message
m...

to a 7000US system and of course get the full 160Gb (beyond the 137Gb 37
bit limit)? I understand a system needs to have LBA Addressing support,
but I cannot determine if mine has that or not. I've looked at all the
diagnostic reporting tools I could find and went through all the BIOS
settings and displays, but nothing.

Also, if I can get the hardware to recognize it, will WinME handle it
with FAT32? If not, what XP file system should I be looking at?







  #7  
Old August 23rd 04, 05:23 AM
Boenospam
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

Tom thanks for your replies - they help.

According to Seagate, the DDO does not affect performance. Here's their
statement on it. So my question back to you is why do you say it's slow?

"... Note: It is a common misonception that the DDO is some kind of memory
resident program or that it has the potential to slow disc access by being
in memory. Like all BIOS routines, the DDo is discarded from memory after
about 4 seconds into the launch of the operating system when the 32-bit
direct access device drivers take over. The DDO exists only to detect
and then present the full capacity of the disc drive to these operating
system device drivers...." Source: www.seagate.com
"Windows 137GB Capacity Barrier Ver 1.0"





Tom Scales wrote:
"Boenospam" wrote in message
m...

Thanks HH. It also seems like Compaq is not offering a BIOS upgrade to
this system that does support LBA .

1. So what if I upgrade to XP - does that have native 48 bit LBA
regardless of my BIOS or IDE controller?



No


2. It appears that Seagate offers this DDO (Dynamic Drive Overlay). From
what I can best tell, it gets around the lack of LBA support in the BIOS,
but I'm still confused about the Win ME OS in this case. Any ideas?



Works, slowly



3. Would buying a ATA PCI controller card fix the problem for LBA support
without any other changes?



Yes



HH wrote:


I doubt a Jan 2001 release PC would have the necessary 48-bit LBA to
allow
installation of a drive larger than 127GB, not 137GB, as you noted.
You're
probably limited to the 120GB drives.
HH

"Boenospam" wrote in message
.com...


to a 7000US system and of course get the full 160Gb (beyond the 137Gb 37
bit limit)? I understand a system needs to have LBA Addressing support,
but I cannot determine if mine has that or not. I've looked at all the
diagnostic reporting tools I could find and went through all the BIOS
settings and displays, but nothing.

Also, if I can get the hardware to recognize it, will WinME handle it
with FAT32? If not, what XP file system should I be looking at?








  #8  
Old August 23rd 04, 02:37 PM
Tom Scales
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

Interesting. I can't imagine how they can magically do address translation
without a performance hit, but.....
"Boenospam" wrote in message
m...
Tom thanks for your replies - they help.

According to Seagate, the DDO does not affect performance. Here's their
statement on it. So my question back to you is why do you say it's slow?

"... Note: It is a common misonception that the DDO is some kind of
memory
resident program or that it has the potential to slow disc access by being
in memory. Like all BIOS routines, the DDo is discarded from memory
after
about 4 seconds into the launch of the operating system when the 32-bit
direct access device drivers take over. The DDO exists only to detect
and then present the full capacity of the disc drive to these operating
system device drivers...." Source: www.seagate.com
"Windows 137GB Capacity Barrier Ver 1.0"





Tom Scales wrote:
"Boenospam" wrote in message
m...

Thanks HH. It also seems like Compaq is not offering a BIOS upgrade to
this system that does support LBA .

1. So what if I upgrade to XP - does that have native 48 bit LBA
regardless of my BIOS or IDE controller?



No


2. It appears that Seagate offers this DDO (Dynamic Drive Overlay). From
what I can best tell, it gets around the lack of LBA support in the BIOS,
but I'm still confused about the Win ME OS in this case. Any ideas?



Works, slowly



3. Would buying a ATA PCI controller card fix the problem for LBA
support without any other changes?



Yes



HH wrote:


I doubt a Jan 2001 release PC would have the necessary 48-bit LBA to
allow
installation of a drive larger than 127GB, not 137GB, as you noted.
You're
probably limited to the 120GB drives.
HH

"Boenospam" wrote in message
y.com...


to a 7000US system and of course get the full 160Gb (beyond the 137Gb
37
bit limit)? I understand a system needs to have LBA Addressing
support,
but I cannot determine if mine has that or not. I've looked at all the
diagnostic reporting tools I could find and went through all the BIOS
settings and displays, but nothing.

Also, if I can get the hardware to recognize it, will WinME handle it
with FAT32? If not, what XP file system should I be looking at?










  #9  
Old August 23rd 04, 03:58 PM
Ben Myers
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

Tom,

DDO (like Western Digital's EZ-Drive and similar software available with most
hard drives and as a free download from the drive mfrs web site) does two
things. First, it inserts itself into the old-timey DOS interrupt 13h software
interrupt chain, replacing the motherboard's built-in BIOS. Next, it places
info about the drive's characteristics down in low memory where a device driver
can expect to see them.

Windows, even Windows XP, boots up with at least a small non-protected mode stub
that starts reading the operating system, finds a hard disk device driver, and
switches as soon as possible to the protected mode device driver. From that
point on, neither the hard disk BIOS or its surrogate DDO is ever heard from
again. There is no performance hit.

But, and it's a BIG BUT, data recovery and/or operating system reinstalls can
become very much complicated by the use of DDO or similar software. Hence, my
never-ending recommendation to use a hard drive controller card instead of DDO
or its counterparts.

Note that the design of Linux has far less reliance on the hard disk BIOS to
provide info about drive geometry, because Linux is smart enough to read this
information from the disk drive directly almost as soon as it gets its operating
system bootstrap record into memory.

Just think what Micro$oft might learn about sound software engineering
principles if they were far less arrogant and took the time to see how other
alternatives work... Ben Myers

On Mon, 23 Aug 2004 09:37:41 -0400, "Tom Scales" wrote:

Interesting. I can't imagine how they can magically do address translation
without a performance hit, but.....
"Boenospam" wrote in message
om...
Tom thanks for your replies - they help.

According to Seagate, the DDO does not affect performance. Here's their
statement on it. So my question back to you is why do you say it's slow?

"... Note: It is a common misonception that the DDO is some kind of
memory
resident program or that it has the potential to slow disc access by being
in memory. Like all BIOS routines, the DDo is discarded from memory
after
about 4 seconds into the launch of the operating system when the 32-bit
direct access device drivers take over. The DDO exists only to detect
and then present the full capacity of the disc drive to these operating
system device drivers...." Source: www.seagate.com
"Windows 137GB Capacity Barrier Ver 1.0"





Tom Scales wrote:
"Boenospam" wrote in message
m...

Thanks HH. It also seems like Compaq is not offering a BIOS upgrade to
this system that does support LBA .

1. So what if I upgrade to XP - does that have native 48 bit LBA
regardless of my BIOS or IDE controller?


No


2. It appears that Seagate offers this DDO (Dynamic Drive Overlay). From
what I can best tell, it gets around the lack of LBA support in the BIOS,
but I'm still confused about the Win ME OS in this case. Any ideas?



Works, slowly



3. Would buying a ATA PCI controller card fix the problem for LBA
support without any other changes?



Yes



HH wrote:


I doubt a Jan 2001 release PC would have the necessary 48-bit LBA to
allow
installation of a drive larger than 127GB, not 137GB, as you noted.
You're
probably limited to the 120GB drives.
HH

"Boenospam" wrote in message
gy.com...


to a 7000US system and of course get the full 160Gb (beyond the 137Gb
37
bit limit)? I understand a system needs to have LBA Addressing
support,
but I cannot determine if mine has that or not. I've looked at all the
diagnostic reporting tools I could find and went through all the BIOS
settings and displays, but nothing.

Also, if I can get the hardware to recognize it, will WinME handle it
with FAT32? If not, what XP file system should I be looking at?











  #10  
Old August 24th 04, 12:55 PM
DEJ57
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

Interesting. I can't imagine how they can magically do address translation
without a performance hit, but.....


Perhaps it is just my imagination, but it sure seems our 7240 slowed with
overlay...maybe I'll have a chance to roughly compare in the near future, when
I retask the 7240 and put the smaller HDD back in without overlay...

Dale
 




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