80Gb: Maxtor 6l080p0 on Intel SE440BX (4s4eb0x1.86a.0011.p0)

BIOS update, EIDE card, or overlay software? (FAQ Hard disk recognition)
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maxtor
BIOS Newbie
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Joined: Wed Jan 24, 2007 4:02 pm

hi folks:

i am new to the forum (and computer tweking too!!!) and am facing this puzzle:

i am trying to upgrade my oldie pII se440bx machine with a 80GB maxtor (6l080p0 ). While the BIOS correctly identifies the drive, it reports it as a 65GB drive.

According to Intel (http://www.intel.com/support/motherboar ... 009028.htm), my mobo and bios (4s4eb0x1.86a.0011.p0) DO admit such a large drive.

WinXP reports the drive as 78+Gb.

I used MaxBlast to "resize" the drive and the BIOS now clips it as 33GB.

Do I need a BIOS update (against Intel's claim)? Is there any other workaround (I searched the forum/internet to no avail)?

Thank you in advance.
edwin
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http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scripts ... =Go%21#BIO

I'm not sure why it is only showing 64GB but I think it is indeed best to put on the latest bios after all. Use Maxblast to have the drive report its original 80GB size, the bios should be able to handle that and show it properly as well.
edwin/evasive

Do not assume anything

System error, strike any user to continue...
maxtor
BIOS Newbie
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Joined: Wed Jan 24, 2007 4:02 pm

thanks edwin; updating the bios is my next step, i guess, just was trying to avoid a needless update.

MaxBlast correctly sizes the drive as +-80Gb (81.9) but, after reboot, the bios reports it as a 65Gb one via AUTO mode. I installed a DDO (not knowing at all what it is) and then the bios showed only 33Gb. I removed the DDO with PowerMax (low level format) and once again Maxtor utilities and Win XP see +- 80Gb but the Bios only sees 65Gb. Who knows....

BTW, i tried routine "solutions": put the drive as only device, slave to the boot one, both jumpered as Cable Select, unplugged CD and DVD, tried another cable.....
cp
BIOS Guru
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the intel page only says that the mainboard's bios will support drives larger than 8.4GB hdds. and it does, as far as i can tell. seems the bios doesn't crash on detecting the drive but just displays the wrong size. i wouldn't bother as the os takes over as soon as it's loaded and renders the hdd information of the bios useless.

btw. it's perfectly normal that the bios would recognize the hdd as 32GB if treated with MaxBlast. that's what MaxBlast is supposed to do. it's much like the 32GB clip jumper on the drive itself.
maxtor
BIOS Newbie
Posts: 17
Joined: Wed Jan 24, 2007 4:02 pm

Thank you for your reply.
cp wrote:the intel page only says that the mainboard's bios will support drives larger than 8.4GB hdds. and it does, as far as i can tell.
You are right; but i think i am also right in understunding from this intel's page quote "
...and greater than 8.4 GB (the theoretical maximum of this category is 137,438,953,472 bytes or 137.4 GB)" that, at least theoretically, the upper limit for my mobo+bios is 137Gb. I am trying to guess if i can reach that limit in practice.
cp wrote: seems the bios doesn't crash on detecting the drive but just displays the wrong size.
you are right again: bios correctly identifies the manufacturer and model of the drive but displays a wrong size.
cp wrote: i wouldn't bother as the os takes over as soon as it's loaded and renders the hdd information of the bios useless.
isen't this a source of unstability? I know nothing about the role of BIOS settings once control is taken by OS.
cp
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The theoretical maximum of 137GB derives from the maximum addressing size of 28bit (2^28) * 512byte LBA blocks. This 28bit addressing scheme is used by the bios to determine the size of the hdd. As long as the bios doesn't crash on detection there might be no problem except for the wrong size. So the bios is a source of unstabilitiy or at least a source of wrong information. The earlier the OS takes over, the better. It's harder to keep the bios up to date than to implement some new stuff into the OS (at least if the OS is designed carefully).
maxtor
BIOS Newbie
Posts: 17
Joined: Wed Jan 24, 2007 4:02 pm

According to this quote i grasped over the net (http://www.myee.com/Storage/Q_21695585.html),
the 65Gb "limit" is not a physical but a display one: the bios correctly counts the sectors
but that count is over its display capabilities. Does this make any sense to you?

Can I assume my drive to be correctly sized but wrongly reported? How con one tell, given that my BIOS does not display any information about the drives (just mode -AUTO, btw-, and maximum capacity -65535MB-)?

Thank you.
[quote begins]

It's already being seen as an 80GB drive !!

Total Sectors: 160086528 => 160086528 x 512 = 81,964,302,336 (so you've actually got an "extra" 1,964,302,336 bytes !!)

The max capacity is obviously kept in a 16 bit counter in Dell's BIOS -- but the drive will work fine with the full 80GB available to the OS. Note the total sector count is correct => and the LBA addressing works fine for any drive below the 48-bit LBA barrier.

I just happen to have an XPS D300 handy -- so I confirmed this is the issue. Mine has a 120GB drive and an 80GB drive in it ==> both work perfectly, but also show 65535Mb in the BIOS, but with the correct sector count. The BIOS handles these perfectly => it's a display issue only [...]

the issue is clearly that Dell uses a 16-bit counter for the # of MB; and 2^16 - 1 (the largest possible number it can represent) = 65535

[quote ends]
cp
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Can I assume my drive to be correctly sized but wrongly reported? How con one tell, given that my BIOS does not display any information about the drives (just mode -AUTO, btw-, and maximum capacity -65535MB-)?
yes, the size is correctly reported...at least as much as a bios can report. there's no need to worry about the bios data as long as your (recent) OS (and by that i mean Linux, Windows XP SP2 or 2000 SP4) gets booted without any problems because the OS will reread the correct information from the drive itself anyway.
maxtor
BIOS Newbie
Posts: 17
Joined: Wed Jan 24, 2007 4:02 pm

ok, thank you. I think i am just ignoring the BIOS count. I am running WinXp SP2 and, beein a PII 400, am planning to downgrade to Win 2000 and dual boot RedHat 9.0 or, even, an older (=lighter) linux distro.

At the moment, the drive is LLFing (I hope, i am on another machine) again: i did it with powermax and, counterexpectedly, i took only about one hour; i am using maxBlast now and it only did less than 20% in 1 hour.

I coul not resist to upgrade to the latest BIOS available (.032.p12) in case it had the 16 bit limit patched: the drive keeps beeing sized as 65Gb BUT i lost my 128MB video card: had to dowgrade to a very old 8MB Intel express 3d card cause my playing with AGP aperture size and palette snooping settings had no efects. A side effect.....

IMPORTANT CONCLUSION: As far as my machine and drive are concerned, a BIOS update DOES NOT solve the wrong drive sizing.
cp
BIOS Guru
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Location: Germany

for W2k make sure you have SP4 installed and for Linux use a recent kernel (2.4+) since LBA48 support depends on the kernel there.
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