maximum hard drive supported

BIOS update, EIDE card, or overlay software? (FAQ Hard disk recognition)
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jimjones
BIOS Rookie
Posts: 49
Joined: Wed May 11, 2005 8:42 am
Location: Belgium

Hi,

i am about to by a new hd for my pc & was wondering what would work with my rather old mobo.

It is a msi k7 pro - latest bios.
On the msi site they talk about support for 65gig hd, i was however planning to get a 250 gig one.(http://www.msi.com.tw/program/support/b ... =94&kind=1)

Can the mobo and/or windows work with this?
if all else fails, try brute force :)
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NickS
BIOS Bodhisattva
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Joined: Fri May 03, 2002 10:34 am
Location: Thames Valley, UK

When they say "support for 65GB HDD", this should include support for HDDs up to 137GB. For bigger HDDs you need a third-party controller board with its own BIOS, or maybe a third-party BIOS.
Tested patched BIOSes. Untested patched BIOSes.
Emails *will* be ignored unless the subject line starts "Wim's BIOS forum"
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jimjones
BIOS Rookie
Posts: 49
Joined: Wed May 11, 2005 8:42 am
Location: Belgium

I have seen posts in which you guys supply patched bioses for this purpose.

Is there any chance you have one for my motherboard?
if all else fails, try brute force :)
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Denniss
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There is no patch needed !
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jimjones
BIOS Rookie
Posts: 49
Joined: Wed May 11, 2005 8:42 am
Location: Belgium

I meant for support for a 250 gig drive as nicks says my mobo will only support up to 137 gig.

He said a different bios so i thought you guys might have a patch for that too ...

thanks for the help neway :)
if all else fails, try brute force :)
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NickS
BIOS Bodhisattva
Posts: 3145
Joined: Fri May 03, 2002 10:34 am
Location: Thames Valley, UK

Sorry, jimjones; the patches we do remove bugs but don't add extra facilities. :(
Tested patched BIOSes. Untested patched BIOSes.
Emails *will* be ignored unless the subject line starts "Wim's BIOS forum"
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Denniss
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Nwer OS like Linux or up-to-date W2K/XP should support HDD bigger than 128GB by directly accessing the HDD without interference from Bios.

The onyl problematic thing might be the Bios IDE detection, it may hickup with such a big HDD. Usually resolved by limiting the drive to 32GB.
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jimjones
BIOS Rookie
Posts: 49
Joined: Wed May 11, 2005 8:42 am
Location: Belgium

the drive indeed works with xp - the only thing is that the bios sees it as a 137.5 gig drive - but that is no problem as i will not try to boot from it anyway

Thanks for the help :)
if all else fails, try brute force :)
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Ritchie
BIOS Guru
Posts: 761
Joined: Wed Oct 30, 2002 5:17 am

JimJones - Thought I might just try and clarify something for you.

Older mainboard BIOSs often have bugs in them which may limit HDD detections typically to 8GB, 32GB or 64GB when they should detect up to 128GB. If such a BIOS has one of these bugs but will recognise up to at least 32GB, the BIOS can be patched so that it will recognise up to 64GB, and then patched further to recognise up to 128GB. These BIOSs will not be capable or be able to be patched to recognise up to 128GB.

If you have a newer board and BIOS it should detect at least 128GB. If I am correct, Phoenix/Award BIOSs introduce this capability with a v6.00 BIOS.
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Denniss
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Depending on Bios it is either detected as 128GiB or 137GB (notice the small difference GB vs GiB), perfectly fine inside the Bios limit.

128GiB = the binary world uses 1024 Bytes = 1MiB, 1024 MiB = 1GiB
137GB = manufacturers use, 1MB = 1 million bytes
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