Is a 32 GB to 100 GB HD upgrade possible

[ToddAndMargo]

Hi All,

A customer has a used laptop with a defective
Toshiba HDD2181 32 GB ATA hard drive in it.

I was thinking of replacing it with a Seagate
ST9100828AS ATA 100 GB drive.

Question: somewhere in the cobwebs in the
back of brain, I remember there being a 32 GB BIOS
barrier. If this is the case, I should stick with
a smaller drive?

Do I also remember with the bios limitation,
that I could install a larger drive, I just would
get to see it all? Or, I could see nothing?

The larger drive is cheaper than the smaller one.

Many thanks,
-T

 

[philo]

Hi All,

A customer has a used laptop with a defective
Toshiba HDD2181 32 GB ATA hard drive in it.

I was thinking of replacing it with a Seagate
ST9100828AS ATA 100 GB drive.

Question: somewhere in the cobwebs in the
back of brain, I remember there being a 32 GB BIOS
barrier. If this is the case, I should stick with
a smaller drive?

Do I also remember with the bios limitation,
that I could install a larger drive, I just would
get to see it all? Or, I could see nothing?

The larger drive is cheaper than the smaller one.

Many thanks,
-T

Most newer machines should not have a problem with a 100gig drive.
Back in the old days, you could get by a bios limitation with a software
overlay.

 

[Big_Al]

philo said this on 12/19/2008 8:43 PM:

Most newer machines should not have a problem with a 100gig drive.
Back in the old days, you could get by a bios limitation with a software
overlay.

And seagate has a migration utility thats a lookalike of Acronis True
Image Home that can be used to just move your system from the 32 gig to
the 100 gig. In the same CPU you should have no issue with a larger
drive for the OS. It should probably like it.

 

[ToddAndMargo]

philo said this on 12/19/2008 8:43 PM:

And seagate has a migration utility thats a lookalike of Acronis True
Image Home that can be used to just move your system from the 32 gig to
the 100 gig. In the same CPU you should have no issue with a larger
drive for the OS. It should probably like it.

The old hard drive is completely trashed. I just want to make sure
if I put the 100 GB in it, I will get at least get 32 GB out of it.

 

[JS]

The partition on the old drive was most likely FAT32 and
for FAT32 partitions 32GB was the max partition size
that Windows can create and format.

JS
http://www.pagestart.com

 

[ToddAndMargo]

The partition on the old drive was most likely FAT32 and
for FAT32 partitions 32GB was the max partition size
that Windows can create and format.

JS
http://www.pagestart.com

Hi JS,

I am missing your point. The old drive is defective.
I can put whatever partition (that XP) likes on the
new one I want. What am I missing?

My question is will the BIOS give me at least 30 GB
of a new 100 GB drive? Or, nothing at all.

The old drive was formatted with NTFS, if that matters.

-T

 

[Anna]

The partition on the old drive was most likely FAT32 and
for FAT32 partitions 32GB was the max partition size
that Windows can create and format.

JS
http://www.pagestart.com

JS:
Actually that Toshiba HDD was a 30 GB HDD, but more importantly...

To the OP...
There shouldn't be any problem installing a 100 GB HDD in your customer's
laptop in terms of any disk capacity issue, but I take it the laptop is
*not* SATA capable. Are you certain that Seagate HDD you mention as a
replacement is a PATA, and *not* a SATA HDD? Seems to me that model is a
SATA drive - but I may be mistaken.
Anna

 

[JS]

"I remember there being a 32 GB BIOS barrier."

My point is that there is no 32GB BIOS barrier,
but there is a FAT32 partition size limit when using
Windows to create a FAT32 partition and that
barrier/size happens to be the 32GB you mentioned.

As to any barriers that may exist on an older PC it
would be a drive that exceeds 137GB in size and that
would be a BIOS and or chipset limitation.

JS
http://www.pagestart.com

 

[ToddAndMargo]

Cool. Thank you.

"I remember there being a 32 GB BIOS barrier."

My point is that there is no 32GB BIOS barrier,
but there is a FAT32 partition size limit when using
Windows to create a FAT32 partition and that
barrier/size happens to be the 32GB you mentioned.

As to any barriers that may exist on an older PC it
would be a drive that exceeds 137GB in size and that
would be a BIOS and or chipset limitation.

JS
http://www.pagestart.com

 

[ToddAndMargo]

To the OP...
There shouldn't be any problem installing a 100 GB HDD in your customer's
laptop in terms of any disk capacity issue, but I take it the laptop is
*not* SATA capable. Are you certain that Seagate HDD you mention as a
replacement is a PATA, and *not* a SATA HDD? Seems to me that model is a
SATA drive - but I may be mistaken.
Anna

Hi Anna,

You are correct: it is SATA. Good save. Thank you!

My supplier also carries a FUJITSU MHW2040AT 40 GB
ATA100 drive. I will use that one instead.

Thank you for saving my butt!

-T

 

[JS]

You're welcome.

JS
http://www.pagestart.com

Cool. Thank you.

 

[Anteaus]

The hardware limitation with older PCs is generally at 137GB. You would be
as well looking for an 80 or 120 PATA, better value and probably newer
technology so faster.

Even at that, many older PCs will take a disk much larger than this, the
issue is that it is sometimes difficult to establish this fact without a
time-consuming test.

The Windows 32GB limit on FAT32 is entirely artificial (and is a total PITA
where USB-connected drives are concerned which must be Linux/Mac compatible)
- if you use a non-XP formatting utility you can realistically create FAT32
drives up to 128GB. Beyond that the format becomes rather inefficient,
although its actual limit is somewhere in the terabytes.

 

[Adrian C]

Hi All,

A customer has a used laptop with a defective
Toshiba HDD2181 32 GB ATA hard drive in it.

I was thinking of replacing it with a Seagate
ST9100828AS ATA 100 GB drive.

That drive is SATA not PATA.

However the Seagate Momentus 5400.3 range is also available in PATA.

I have successfully installed the 120GB ST9120822A in an old Toshiba
4000CDS laptop with no issues. That Pentium-II laptop was originally
shipped with a 4GB drive.

 

[Lil' Dave]

Hi All,

A customer has a used laptop with a defective
Toshiba HDD2181 32 GB ATA hard drive in it.

I was thinking of replacing it with a Seagate
ST9100828AS ATA 100 GB drive.

Question: somewhere in the cobwebs in the
back of brain, I remember there being a 32 GB BIOS
barrier. If this is the case, I should stick with
a smaller drive?

Do I also remember with the bios limitation,
that I could install a larger drive, I just would
get to see it all? Or, I could see nothing?

The larger drive is cheaper than the smaller one.

Many thanks,
-T

The previous bios limitation was 137GB unformatted/unpartitioned hard drive.
Way prior to that was 40GB. Larger capacity hard drives may have put 32GB
clip jumpers on them for backwards compatibility. That's where you probably
got that number.

If using restoration media, use a blank unpartitioned/unformatted hard
drive.