Adding Large HDD to old motherboard

[lorisarvendu]

Hullo everyone.

I've built myself up a quick base unit to muck about with linux on.
It's based around an old 66Mhz LX motherboard with a celeron400. I've
got a 20Gb drive in there, but am thinking about putting a 120Gb drive
in and using as network storage for my little lan. Someone told me
the board might not support such a large HDD, so I checked with a
couple of borrowed drives. It sees the 30G, but hangs on POST when
the 80G was in (couldn't detect the drive geometry I suppose).

Since the board's at its last BIOS revision, I can't get a bios update
to solve this. But I don't want to just replace the mobo, because I
got this one for £10 & the case came free. I wondered about PC ATA
controllers (Promise, Highpoint).

Thing is, I've searched on google etc, and some sites say an ATA
controller plugged into an old motherboard will ignore the mobo's bios
restrictions, and just see the whole size of the drive.

Other sites say that if the mobo's bios can only go up to 32G HDD size
(or 120G if you have a BH6), adding a promise card will still only
allow you to see up to that limit, no matter how big the drive
actually is.

Has anyone out there had practical experience of whether this works or
not? Although I suspect that even if works for someone, no guarantee
it'll work for all motherboards.

cheers

Dave

 

[Wayne Morgan]

An add-in controller card should have its own BIOS and therefore will let
you exceed the limitations of your motherboard. Also, the new controller
card will probably be faster than the controller on your motherboard,
allowing you to take full performance advantage of the new hard drive. You
may even want to look at a SATA add-in card and/or and IDE RAID card,
depending on how much performance you need.

Another option is to use Drive Overlay software than can be downloaded from
the drive manufacturer's web site. I don't recommend this, any small drive
problem could cause you to lose everything on the drive (although it should
be backed up, right?). Also, the overlay software won't give you the
performance boost that an add-in card will give you.

 

[philo]

Hullo everyone.

I've built myself up a quick base unit to muck about with linux on.
It's based around an old 66Mhz LX motherboard with a celeron400. I've
got a 20Gb drive in there, but am thinking about putting a 120Gb drive
in and using as network storage for my little lan. Someone told me
the board might not support such a large HDD, so I checked with a
couple of borrowed drives. It sees the 30G, but hangs on POST when
the 80G was in (couldn't detect the drive geometry I suppose).

Since the board's at its last BIOS revision, I can't get a bios update
to solve this. But I don't want to just replace the mobo, because I
got this one for £10 & the case came free. I wondered about PC ATA
controllers (Promise, Highpoint).

Thing is, I've searched on google etc, and some sites say an ATA
controller plugged into an old motherboard will ignore the mobo's bios
restrictions, and just see the whole size of the drive.

Other sites say that if the mobo's bios can only go up to 32G HDD size
(or 120G if you have a BH6), adding a promise card will still only
allow you to see up to that limit, no matter how big the drive
actually is.

Has anyone out there had practical experience of whether this works or
not? Although I suspect that even if works for someone, no guarantee
it'll work for all motherboards.

cheers

Dave

The pci controller should do the job...
just as long as you can get linux support for it you should be OK

however...there is no absolute guarantee...
i once tried a SIIG controller on a p-75 but the machine never even saw the
controller at all...yet on another machine I confirmed that it was working.

go figure

 

[kony]

Hullo everyone.

I've built myself up a quick base unit to muck about with linux on.
It's based around an old 66Mhz LX motherboard with a celeron400. I've
got a 20Gb drive in there, but am thinking about putting a 120Gb drive
in and using as network storage for my little lan. Someone told me
the board might not support such a large HDD, so I checked with a
couple of borrowed drives. It sees the 30G, but hangs on POST when
the 80G was in (couldn't detect the drive geometry I suppose).

Since the board's at its last BIOS revision, I can't get a bios update
to solve this. But I don't want to just replace the mobo, because I
got this one for £10 & the case came free. I wondered about PC ATA
controllers (Promise, Highpoint).

Thing is, I've searched on google etc, and some sites say an ATA
controller plugged into an old motherboard will ignore the mobo's bios
restrictions, and just see the whole size of the drive.
True


Other sites say that if the mobo's bios can only go up to 32G HDD size
(or 120G if you have a BH6), adding a promise card will still only
allow you to see up to that limit, no matter how big the drive
actually is.
False


Has anyone out there had practical experience of whether this works or
not? Although I suspect that even if works for someone, no guarantee
it'll work for all motherboards.

cheers

Dave

Add-on PCI cards that include an eeprom, which is just about any/every
card you can get these days, including those from Promise, Highpoint,
do allow using larger HDDs than the motherboard's bios supports. It
is the preferred solution when a motherboard change isn't wanted, and
"should" work on any board, not varying from one to another whether it
allows this support.

 

[Trent©]

Thing is, I've searched on google etc, and some sites say an ATA
controller plugged into an old motherboard will ignore the mobo's bios
restrictions, and just see the whole size of the drive.

That's exactly the way that it works. As a matter of fact, you can
then turn off the controllers on the mb if you so desire.

Other sites say that if the mobo's bios can only go up to 32G HDD size
(or 120G if you have a BH6), adding a promise card will still only
allow you to see up to that limit, no matter how big the drive
actually is.

Its the BIOS that gives it that capability...and the controller card
comes with its own BIOS. If yer in doubt, check the specs for the
BIOS that comes with the card that yer gonna buy. But you should have
no problem with any modern controller card.

Has anyone out there had practical experience of whether this works or
not?

Yup...done a few! lol

Although I suspect that even if works for someone, no guarantee
it'll work for all motherboards.

You shouldn't have any problem...but don't quote me! lol

Good luck.


Have a nice week...

Trent

Follow Joan Rivers' example --- get pre-embalmed!

 

[Paul L]

Hullo everyone.

I've built myself up a quick base unit to muck about with linux on.
It's based around an old 66Mhz LX motherboard with a celeron400. I've
got a 20Gb drive in there, but am thinking about putting a 120Gb drive
in and using as network storage for my little lan. Someone told me
the board might not support such a large HDD, so I checked with a
couple of borrowed drives. It sees the 30G, but hangs on POST when
the 80G was in (couldn't detect the drive geometry I suppose).

Did you set the jumpers correctly on the 80Gig?

 

[lorisarvendu]

Did you set the jumpers correctly on the 80Gig?

Didn't touch the jumpers. It came straight out of a P4, primary
interface. Just swopped it with the 20Gb primary on the linux box, to
eliminate any conflict between the two drives. If it had worked I
then would have reinstalled the 20Gb on primary, and put the 80Gb on
secondary (instead of the CDrom). If that had worked I would then
have tried to slave it to the 20Gb.

The consensus seems to be that it will work, and it has worked, so I
think I can safely splash out on a controller card, then wait till
120G's drop in price.

The next thing I'll need to figure out is how easy it is to manually
change the linux installation to boot from a larger drive on a
different controller. Being a bit of a linux newbie I'm assuming the
new drive will no longer be seen as /dev/hda (/dev/hde?), so I guess
I'll need to alter some configuration files in /boot.

Thanks for everyone's help.

Dave

 

[Trent©]

Didn't touch the jumpers. It came straight out of a P4, primary
interface. Just swopped it with the 20Gb primary on the linux box, to
eliminate any conflict between the two drives. If it had worked I
then would have reinstalled the 20Gb on primary, and put the 80Gb on
secondary (instead of the CDrom). If that had worked I would then
have tried to slave it to the 20Gb.

Paul brings up a good point. That may indeed by your problem...at
least with THAT drive.

If the jumpers are not set correctly...on EACH of the drives connected
to that controller...you may not be able to see the drive.


Have a nice week...

Trent

Follow Joan Rivers' example --- get pre-embalmed!

 

[Mike Walsh]

I have done this with Promise ATA adapters. They emulate SCSI and do the disk address translation independent of the system BIOS. The only problemmight be the ability of the motherboard to boot with a SCSI adapter.

 

[lorisarvendu]

I have done this with Promise ATA adapters. They emulate SCSI and do the disk address translation independent of the system BIOS. The only problem might be the ability of the motherboard to boot with a SCSI adapter.

snipped<

That's not a problem. The system is currently installed on a 20G drive
which is on the mobo's primary ide interface. I'll probably keep that
as the boot drive and add my future large drive to the ATA adapter, so
the system will never have to boot from the adapter.

I've come to this conclusion as easier than attempting to clone the
20G to a 120G, then trying to get the linux system to boot from a
different adapter.

cheers

Dave

 

[lorisarvendu]

Paul brings up a good point. That may indeed by your problem...at
least with THAT drive.

If the jumpers are not set correctly...on EACH of the drives connected
to that controller...you may not be able to see the drive.

Nope, when I pulled the 80G out of a PC at work, it was already set as
Master, no slave, on that system's primary interface. I plugged it
into my system's primary, replacing the 20G. Thus it was still
jumpered as Master, plugged into the primary interface, and there were
no other IDE devices plugged into the system.

Since it failed to work in this fashion I concluded the board wouldn't
see greater than 30G. In fact the "error" was something I've not seen
before - Bios starts POST, starts to detect the drive, writes the
words "UDMA2" then pauses with a flashing cursor. Obviously couldn't
figure out the drive geometry, so just hung at that point.

This was even after flashing with a mfr's beta bios from 2000, which
was supposed to enable larger drives thru int13h extensions. I've
since been reading up a bit, and it seems that int13h extensions can
only take me up to 33.8Gb max anyway. Hence why the 80 wouldn't work.

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/bios/size-c.html

Ta for all the info.

Dave

 

[Trent©]

Nope, when I pulled the 80G out of a PC at work, it was already set as
Master, no slave, on that system's primary interface. I plugged it
into my system's primary, replacing the 20G. Thus it was still
jumpered as Master, plugged into the primary interface, and there were
no other IDE devices plugged into the system.

Did you check and see how it was set up in the BIOS?

Since it failed to work in this fashion I concluded the board wouldn't
see greater than 30G. In fact the "error" was something I've not seen
before - Bios starts POST, starts to detect the drive, writes the
words "UDMA2" then pauses with a flashing cursor. Obviously couldn't
figure out the drive geometry, so just hung at that point.

Probably correct...but not necessarily because of the reason you
think. You've changed out the drives...but the computer's BIOS may
not know that...if its not set to 'auto'. So its confused. Its
expecting the same old, usual 20 gig drive.

And which IDE cable did you use?

This was even after flashing with a mfr's beta bios from 2000, which
was supposed to enable larger drives thru int13h extensions. I've
since been reading up a bit, and it seems that int13h extensions can
only take me up to 33.8Gb max anyway. Hence why the 80 wouldn't work.

You shouldn't have any problem with the new controller card. Good
luck.


Have a nice week...

Trent

Follow Joan Rivers' example --- get pre-embalmed!

 

[thunder]

The next thing I'll need to figure out is how easy it is to manually
change the linux installation to boot from a larger drive on a
different controller. Being a bit of a linux newbie I'm assuming the
new drive will no longer be seen as /dev/hda (/dev/hde?), so I guess
I'll need to alter some configuration files in /boot.

I haven't been following this thread closely, so . . . Is this to be a
dual-boot machine? If not, you could remove the disk in your CMOS, boot
from a floppy, and Linux *should* be able to access the entire drive.
Linux doesn't use the BIOS, but lilo does.

 

[Not so quick]

The last two larger drives I bought both came with
controller cards. I usually buy from Fry's electronics
which has a 14 day without restocking fee, return
policy. I think the drives were both Maxtor. 250
& 160 bought on price as archives and with external
USB boxes.