How to use Maxtor 160gig hard drive w/Gigabyte GA-7VTXH (ATA66/100)

[Daryl Helwig]

I have a 2 year old pc, built with a Gigabyte GA-7VTXE (VIA KT266A,AGP
chipset, onboard IDE: ATA66/ATA100).

I just bought a Maxtor 160gig ATA hard drive. According to the
booklet, my ATA100 motherboard will only access 137gigs of this drive.
It recommends buying a $37 ULTRA ATA/133 PCI adapter card.

I also found reference to updating my BIOS instead, which I don't
think is available.

I also read on line that the whole drive WILL be accessable but will
not be as fast.

Where do I REALLY stand? Do I need to take the drive back to Office
Depot and get the 120gig drive instead, or CAN I use this drive? I'm
confused.

 

[Ron Cook]

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GA-7VTXE

The Giga-Byte web site does not list any updates to the drive tables as part
of their BIOS upgrades:

(http://www.giga-byte.com/Motherboard/Support/BIOS/BIOS_GA-7VTXE.htm)

Your best bet might be to purchase the add-in card. Promise and Maxtor are
two companies that market such products.

It's possible (although I didn't look at the manual) that your BIOS can be
set to boot from a SCSI device; that's generally how these add-in cards
present themselves to the system.

- --
Ron n1zhi
(e-mail address removed)
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[gothika]

On 15 Jan 2004 15:20:45 -0800, (e-mail address removed) (Daryl Helwig)
wrote:
You could swap the drives and go witht the 120, howevver with the
maxtor card it'll run much faster.
I have the Maxtor 133 ATA card and matching 80gig drive, necessary for
the video work I do.
The Maxblast software that comes with the card will install and run
first thing at boot up loading the drive attached to it as master.
If you do run of the ATA 100 mobo controller the drive will run
slower. A bad thing for fast intensive tasks like digital video and
most of the later generation of games.

 

[KW_UK]

I also have this drive in a win xp pro machine

you will need to use the utility from maxtors site "big drive enabler" to
see beyond the 137GB in windows.

Do not use the drive before you have enabled sizes larger than 137gb with
that utility

 

[Daryl Helwig]

you will need to use the utility from maxtors site "big drive enabler" to
see beyond the 137GB in windows.

Are you refering to the adapter card as the 'big drive enabler'?

Do not use the drive before you have enabled sizes larger than 137gb with
that utility.

Will this cause damage?

 

[KW_UK]

Go to this page:

http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/products/ata/desktop/diamondmax_plus_9/index.htm

and under utilities downlaod max blast 3, and big drive enabler.

Once you have connected the hdd up with the ide and power cable, power on
pc, run the big drive enabler, then use max blast, it will find your
unpartioned drive then partition it for you.

easy.

Karl