New Hard Drive -UDMA etc

[Michael]

Hello,

My old hard drive is udma 33 or something similar with speed of 5400 rpm,
only 4.3 GB.

I'm thinking about buying & installing a 20 GB drive which will probably
have a higher udma figure and faster speed 7000+ rpm.

Will the connections be ok when I remove old ATA drive and will it work,
possibly at a lower speed ?

I have Win'98 with a 1999 BIOS and don't want to update it in case I mess it
up. I would be happy with the slower speed and also if the BIOS doesn't
recognize the full capacity etc. So my main question is will the drive work
?

Mike.

 

[xiaoke]

Hello,

My old hard drive is udma 33 or something similar with speed of 5400 rpm,
only 4.3 GB.

I'm thinking about buying & installing a 20 GB drive which will probably
have a higher udma figure and faster speed 7000+ rpm.

Will the connections be ok when I remove old ATA drive and will it work,
possibly at a lower speed ?

I have Win'98 with a 1999 BIOS and don't want to update it in case I mess
it up. I would be happy with the slower speed and also if the BIOS doesn't
recognize the full capacity etc. So my main question is will the drive
work ?

Mike.

It should work.
A BIOS upgrade will help.

 

[Shep©]

Hello,

My old hard drive is udma 33 or something similar with speed of 5400 rpm,
only 4.3 GB.

I'm thinking about buying & installing a 20 GB drive which will probably
have a higher udma figure and faster speed 7000+ rpm.

Will the connections be ok when I remove old ATA drive and will it work,
possibly at a lower speed ?

I have Win'98 with a 1999 BIOS and don't want to update it in case I mess it
up. I would be happy with the slower speed and also if the BIOS doesn't
recognize the full capacity etc. So my main question is will the drive work
?

Mike.

You will most likely need a new 80 wire 40 pin UDMA 66/100/133 cable.
Click here,
http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/hard.html

HTH



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[Jeff]

Not too long ago I bought a new 40 GB HD to add to my computer which
currently used a 30 GB HD so I had some backup capacity and a copy of my
master HD in case it crashed.

I'm really sorry now that I didn't buy a bigger drive. The difference in
prices isn't so big a deal in the long run over which you'll use the new
drive. I would spend a little more money if I could do it again and go up
to at least 80 GB or more. So were I you I would consider buying something
a little bigger than 20 GB.

 

[Sleepy]

Hello,

My old hard drive is udma 33 or something similar with speed of 5400 rpm,
only 4.3 GB.

I'm thinking about buying & installing a 20 GB drive which will probably
have a higher udma figure and faster speed 7000+ rpm.

Will the connections be ok when I remove old ATA drive and will it work,
possibly at a lower speed ?

I have Win'98 with a 1999 BIOS and don't want to update it in case I mess it
up. I would be happy with the slower speed and also if the BIOS doesn't
recognize the full capacity etc. So my main question is will the drive work
?

Mike.

To give you an exact answer we need to know the Motherboard
make and model. If the mobo IDE ports are black then they are UDMA 33
only - the faster versions are coloured (generally Blue) and you need the
appropiate cable too. If its a 99 bios then I'd guess youre stuck with UDMA
33.

 

[Ron Reaugh]

Hello,

My old hard drive is udma 33 or something similar with speed of 5400 rpm,
only 4.3 GB.

I'm thinking about buying & installing a 20 GB drive which will probably
have a higher udma figure and faster speed 7000+ rpm.

Will the connections be ok when I remove old ATA drive and will it work,
possibly at a lower speed ?

All should work fine with or without the old HD connected and likely at
close to full speed.

I have Win'98 with a 1999 BIOS and don't want to update it in case I mess it
up.

Always flash the latest mobo BIOS.

I would be happy with the slower speed and also if the BIOS doesn't
recognize the full capacity etc. So my main question is will the drive work
?

Except for the size issue, yes. FLASH the latest mobo BIOS carefully as
there is only a very tiny risk.

 

[Gareth Tuckwell]

Hello,

My old hard drive is udma 33 or something similar with speed of 5400 rpm,
only 4.3 GB.

I'm thinking about buying & installing a 20 GB drive which will probably
have a higher udma figure and faster speed 7000+ rpm.

Will the connections be ok when I remove old ATA drive and will it work,
possibly at a lower speed ?

I have Win'98 with a 1999 BIOS and don't want to update it in case I mess
it up. I would be happy with the slower speed and also if the BIOS doesn't
recognize the full capacity etc. So my main question is will the drive
work ?

Everything should be fine, but I can't remember what the drive size limit is
with Win98. I think, with fat32, you could go up to about 128MB (might even
be 160GB), before you hit problems. The UDMA rating is just the maximum
transfer speed of the drive, so don't worry about that. Also, why get a new
drive as small at 20GB - the price of a 60GB (or 80GB) drive is barely more
than a 20 - in fact, can you still buy 20GB drives?

 

[Skipai Da Otter]

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Hash: SHA1

Not too long ago I bought a new 40 GB HD to add to my computer
which currently used a 30 GB HD so I had some backup capacity and a
copy of my master HD in case it crashed.

I'm really sorry now that I didn't buy a bigger drive. The
difference in prices isn't so big a deal in the long run over which
you'll use the new drive. I would spend a little more money if I
could do it again and go up to at least 80 GB or more. So were I
you I would consider buying something a little bigger than 20 GB.

That's if the motherboard in question has a bios upgrade that can
take that size of a HDD. I know my 1999 motherboard. Socket 7, K6/2
chip inside it can only go up to 60gb's and that's it. No more than
that. Giga-byte never did another update on the bios after F4. So
it's really up to the manufacturer if they have implemented any
improvements. But I be guessing if there is a bios upgrade that it
be 60gb's and that's about it.

Some motherboards are just too old to flash to use those 80+gb
drives.

- --
Skipai

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[Michael]

Probably won't flash the BIOS as the latest available is 2000, mine is 1999.

Mike

 

[Michael]

I wanted a 20GB as a quick search indicated it to be one of the smallest
capacity drives available and therefore cheap. My current drive on my Win'98
machine is 4.3 GB and I have never used more than 2 GB of it.

Mike.

 

[kony]

Probably won't flash the BIOS as the latest available is 2000, mine is 1999.

... and that's a reason? Why do they release newer bios
then? I could see if the newer bios didn't address your
problem, but that it's only 1 year newer? One year is long
time when it comes to some board's bios updates.

 

[larrymoencurly]

Always flash the latest mobo BIOS.

Isn't it better to wait a few weeks for bug reports to come in? For
example FIC is famous for releasing bad BIOSes, like the one for the
Socket 7 VA-503+ that removed support for HDs larger than 8.4GB or
another that had major mouse problems.

 

[larrymoencurly]

Probably won't flash the BIOS as the latest available is 2000, mine is 1999.

??? I have mobos from 1996-1997 that I've flashed several times, with
BIOSes as new as Jan. 2000.

I have Win'98 with a 1999 BIOS and don't want to update it in case I mess
it up.

Boot from a floppy to flash it so that there won't be any extra
programs loaded into memory that may mess up the flash.

There are free programs, like the Belarc Advisor (see www.crucial.com)
and Everest (search for "Everest download"), that can tell you lots of
stuff about your computer, including the BIOS version and mobo model.
Also if your BIOS is Award and dated late 1999 or newer, it may
already support HDs as large as about 137GB. But if it's older some
of the experts in the forums at www.wimsbios.com may be able to patch
it for you, and a list of BIOSes they've already patched can be found
at wims.rainbow-software.org, including two that I've been using with
120GB HDs.

If you instead get a Promise or SIIG PCI HD controller card, you'll be
able to run HDs a million times larger than 137GB, even with Windows
98 through ME.

 

[Gareth Tuckwell]

I wanted a 20GB as a quick search indicated it to be one of the smallest
capacity drives available and therefore cheap. My current drive on my
Win'98 machine is 4.3 GB and I have never used more than 2 GB of it.

If you are only using 2GB of your current 4.3GB, then why upgrade? Sure, you
will get a bit of a performance upgrade, but not much - you might be better
spending money on a big memory upgrade and turn off the windows virtual
memory!

Worst case would be that your BIOS can't support the largest disks and you
are stuck with about 8.4GB, but if you only need 2GB, then that wouldn't be
much of a problem?!?