CUV4X, BIOS, and MAx Disk size?

I have a CUV4X with a dying 30GB IBM Deskstar. I bought a 160GB IBM
(Hitachi) Deskstar 7K250 to replace it and have questions that I probably
should have asked earlier. The computer has BIOS 1004 and has dual-boot with
Win2000 and Win98.

1) Should update the BIOS? If so, should I flash to 1009 or to 1010 beta 3?
If 1010.003 is the best, why is it only available on the german site?

2) I saw a post here that 128GB is the max disk size supported. Is that true
for all BIOS's? If so can I just not use the last 30GB on my new disk or
have I screwed up? Note that 30GB disk has 5 partitions. Win98 can only see
the first 4. Win2000 boots out of fifth partition which is NTFS. I would
expect to keep the same size for the first 4 partitions.

3) My save attempt is to have Ghost 2003 do a disk to disk copy from DOS
with the option to force it through bad blocks. Any comments?

4) A belated thought. I only see errors when in Win2000 which is at the high
end of the 30GB (2-3GB left) disk. Do I really have disk errors or have I
hit some size limit with BIOS 1004?

Thanks for any help/suggestions,

Joe M

"JoeM" wrote in message
ink.net...

I have a CUV4X with a dying 30GB IBM Deskstar. I bought a 160GB IBM
(Hitachi) Deskstar 7K250 to replace it and have questions that I probably
should have asked earlier. The computer has BIOS 1004 and has dual-boot
with
Win2000 and Win98.

1) Should update the BIOS? If so, should I flash to 1009 or to 1010 beta
3?
If 1010.003 is the best, why is it only available on the german site?


1010 beta 3 is actually 1010 beta 2, AFAIK. Don't know why they named it
1010 beta 3 on the site. Anyway, it's a beta, traditionally all betas have
been available on the german site only. But it's a beta only because it was
released long after the CUV4X had been phased out. A final BIOS is actually
identical to the last beta succesfully tested, i.e. 1009 final might have
been 1009 beta 6 and the only difference betwen the two files would be the
name string displayed. 1010 is a minor modification of 1009 to ensure
complete WinXP compatibility, something to do with ACPI AFAIK. The fact that
it actually underwent two revisions could easily imply it's of 'final BIOS'
quality and only released as beta to avoid support calls to Asus for a
product they ceased producing long ago. Just flash 1010.003 and don't bother
with 1009 at all. It's as stable as it gets.

2) I saw a post here that 128GB is the max disk size supported. Is that
true
for all BIOS's? If so can I just not use the last 30GB on my new disk or
have I screwed up? Note that 30GB disk has 5 partitions. Win98 can only
see
the first 4. Win2000 boots out of fifth partition which is NTFS. I would
expect to keep the same size for the first 4 partitions.


I've only tested 120 GB disks on my CUV4X so I don't know if the 1010 BIOS
extends disk size support beyond that. In general it's good to have the BIOS
see the whole disk to ensure compatibility with disk-accessing software that
utilises the BIOS to obtain the disk's details.
I assume it'll either be detected in its entirety or it'll still be detected
as an 128 GB disk (or whatever the maximum supported size is). Under the
latter senario you should exhaust the (reduced) available disk space with a
DOS-based partitioning utility, and then partition the remaining disk space
under windows 2000 (which using embeded drivers can access disks of
terabyte-class sizes). But make sure everything you install on that extra
space will never need be accessed from within BIOS-based disk utilities. The
keypoint in the above senario is to make sure the detection size limit (i.e.
128 gb) is also a partition limit, because if a partition continuously
extends below and above that this could lead to problems.
If the disk isn't detected at all, then I think IBM (hitachi) disks
traditionally have had some jumpers to reduce the reported size (down to 32,
75, 128 GB or whatever it is anyway), then use a DOS/BIOS based partitioning
utility to arrange your partitions as suggested above. You can use that to
drop below the critical size limit to ensure detection, but I don't know
whether once the OS has booted up the full capacity will be available or it
works as a hard-wired limit.
If neither applies and you don't want to a) use a floppy disk with the IBM
BIOS extender or b) use a smaller disk as boot and keep the 160 GB as a
second one, then you can just install a recent PCI IDE controller which has
its own BIOS with all the proper int13h extensions for boot-time ultra-large
disk support.

3) My save attempt is to have Ghost 2003 do a disk to disk copy from DOS
with the option to force it through bad blocks. Any comments?


Sounds ok.

4) A belated thought. I only see errors when in Win2000 which is at the
high
end of the 30GB (2-3GB left) disk. Do I really have disk errors or have I
hit some size limit with BIOS 1004?


Nope, sorry. Even 1997/1998-produced boards manage 32 GB disk detection
(they could manage more with the proper BIOS upgrades, but that'd cut-off
sales from later boards since lots of people's upgrade paths imply just a
larger drive and some more RAM - hence suitable BIOSes are never produced
once the board's off-production).

Thanks for any help/suggestions,

Joe M



Regards
Nikos

Thank you Nikos. I appreciate your help.