Install a new big hard drive?

[jackzhu]

Hi, everyone:

I want to buy a new big hard drive(at least 10GB) to install in my old PC. But some tech reviews said that this kind of upgrade may impose some hard drive limit(8.4GB). I want to make sure if my PC can 'hold' the bigger hard drive(>10GB) before I make any upgrade plan.

My old PC: Pentium-166, two bus master PCI IDE connectors in motherboard. There're already 3 IDE devices connect to the two interfaces: 2.1GB hard drive, 3.6 hard drive and CD-ROM.

The feature of the on-board PCT IDE interface are /forum/frown.giffrom motherboard manual)

1. PIO Mode 3 and PIO Mode 4 Enhanced IDE
2. DMA Mode 2 Bus Master IDE

Are there other factors I should consider? Such as BIOS?

Could anyone help me? More detail, much better.

Thanks a lot!!!

Jack

[jeffgordon24]

As long as you run win98 or win95c you could convert to fat32 and partition the drive and it should recognize it at 10 or above but I have also heard it won't recognize over 8gig even after you convert to fat32. My drive is only a 4.3 so I'm not sure but I do know you have to have either win98 or win95c to use fat32.

Also your bios would have to recognize it, so I would think that would determine whether or not use could use a larger drive. You'd have to manually setup the drive in the bios. The hard drive manual would have all the listings to use for the cylinders, heads, and so on.

Well according to this I'm right.
http://www.westerndigital.com/products/drives/8-4barr.html

[This message has been edited by jeffgordon24 (edited 08-26-99).]

[This message has been edited by jeffgordon24 (edited 08-26-99).]

[Yoda]

Hi,

Maybe not the total solution but i hope it gets you in the right direction. Your BIOS have to support the "INT13" extensions otherwise you need to stick to IBM or WD. When you buy a retail version of their big disks y'll get a program which operates between the bios and the OS. In this way win98 would see your whole drive. I don't know if it works for DOS. I have an Award BIOS, 25Gb IBM HD and all went OK without the interface program.

Good luck

[RobRich]

Yoda is on the right track. My recommendation is go for a Western Digital harddrive, mainly impart to their setup software. Just boot from their floppy, and it does the rest. It can partition, format (FAT16 or FAT32), and install a bios override driver (only if needed) with a minimum of fuss. It automatically determines your IDE and bios limits, and determines whether to load a special drive interface program or to run with the defualt bios settings.

[krusty]

Quantum have a similar drive overlay for older mainboards with large Hard disks.