HD BIOS info question

[Chi Pete]

Hello there,

I have an MSI 875P board with a WD Ultra 100 120G on it. I get some rather strange results (I think) when running ATTO's benchmark and am wondering if it has anything to do with my BIOS telling me this specs on auto detect for my HD:

Cylinders - 57,461 (WD spec says it should 232,581)
Heads - 16 (WD specs the same)
Sectors - 255 (WD spec says it should be 63)

I can't manual enter the WD specs - the MSI BIOS won't let me enter a high number of cylinders.

thanks:t

[Chi Pete]

Attached is the ATTO output

[Sterling_Aug]

Check if you can flash update the mobo BIOS.

[Chi Pete]

BIOS is flashable and current at ver 1.6

I do have a problem if my HD set up in Bios is diff than what Western Digital Spec's - right???

[fishybawb]

Not if it's working fine and showing the correct size in Windows. Might just be a dodgy benchmark, I'm not familiar with ATTO so I couldn't say...

[Peter M]

The Cyl/Heads/Sectors information is entirely useless on drives larger than 7.8 real / 8.4 marketing gigabytes.
Larger drives can only be accessed through LBA (logical block addressing) where a linear sector number from 0 to (capacity-1) is requested, not a certain cyl/hd/sec.

So, the numbers you see are all pointless and fake anyway. Nevermind - as long as the operating system and BIOS see the drive's actual capacity, all is fine.

(Mind you, your 120-marketing-GB drive has only 111.7 real GB.)

[Chi Pete]

Thanks for the info