Problems with big HD's in old machines?

[bdgbill]

I am planning on buying a 200GB HD for my old PIII today. I thought I had read somwhere that older systems sometimes cannot handle very large HD's.

Anyone heard anything about this? I'm hoping that if there is a problem I can Fix it by partitioning the HD.

[reven]

a pIII should be able to work with a 200gb hdd without any problems, i think its just really old machines like 200mhz ones (even they probably can handle it).

[bdgbill]

Thanks Reven. I'm off to Future Shop. $129.00 for a 200 GB HD. $0.65 a GB!

[wtg]

It's true. Some older BIOS's won't recognize anything HD greater than 128 GB or so. If you have that situation you'll either need a BIOS upgrade, a plug-in PCI HD controller, or need to use somekind of hard drive utility. Maxtor drives come with the MaxBlast utility that loads before the OS and allows full access to the drive even if the BIOS doesn't. Most big HD manufacturers ship their drives with an equivalent. If you plan to use an OS other than Windows you may have trouble though - I'm not certain. A BIOS or separate controller may be your only option then.

Also, if memory serves, Win2k has a registry setting that needs to be turned on to access drives greater than 128GB. Using one of the HD utilities may enable this for you, but if your BIOS supports the big drive and you don't need the utility, you may still have to set this registry value. I don't recall what exactly it is, but my guess is that a little time spent Googling will find it for you.

Good luck,
Tim

[dneprrider]

I have an older PIII 600MHz machine with a BIOS that didn't recognize a new 160GB drive. However I simply ignored this and found that the OS (win2000) did see the drive. I have had no problems using that drive as my main recording storage area.

[capone]

Also, in many cases, you can find a bios update that fixes limitations like that (when it was just a lack of vision at the time, and not a strict limitation of the hardware)

[wtg]

Also, in many cases, you can find a bios update that fixes limitations like that (when it was just a lack of vision at the time, and not a strict limitation of the hardware)

Right... I said BIOS upgrade when I really mean BIOS update. I have an old 933 Gateway my kids use and I needed to apply a BIOS patch to make it recognize a 160 GB HD. I could have used the MaxBlast software but prefered a more straightforward fix.

[dneprrider]

There wasn't a BIOS update available for my Compaq PIII 600MHz so I'm glad that it worked using windows OS.

[bdgbill]

Success!

I was a little worried because the IBM bios did not properly recognize the drive (it showed up as 6725 MB). But I ran the Maxblast software that came with my Maxtor drive and all is well.