high capacity drives

  • Thread starter Thread starter Gavin
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Gavin

Hi,

I have a M6TBA mobo. I've read the manual and it says it will support a
high capacity HDD but does not allude to what a high capacity drive might
be?

Under the heading PCI Enhanced IDE Built-In On Board it says:

-Supports four IDE hard disk Drives
-Supports PIO Mode 4, Master Mode, high performance HDDs
-Supports Ultra DMA/33, Bus Master Mode
-Supports LBA Mode
-Supports high capacity HDDs

What would i be safe going for?

Thanks in advance for the help.
Regards.
Gavin
 
Gavin said:
Hi,

I have a M6TBA mobo. I've read the manual and it says it will support a
high capacity HDD but does not allude to what a high capacity drive might
be?

Under the heading PCI Enhanced IDE Built-In On Board it says:

-Supports four IDE hard disk Drives
-Supports PIO Mode 4, Master Mode, high performance HDDs
-Supports Ultra DMA/33, Bus Master Mode
-Supports LBA Mode
-Supports high capacity HDDs

What would i be safe going for?

Thanks in advance for the help.
Regards.
Gavin
Click to expand...

I think it means over 120Gb, but I'm not sure. Some boards have a
limit of, I think it's 128Gb, I'm guessing that this one doesn't.
 
Hi,

I have a M6TBA mobo. I've read the manual and it says it will support a
high capacity HDD but does not allude to what a high capacity drive might
be?

Under the heading PCI Enhanced IDE Built-In On Board it says:

-Supports four IDE hard disk Drives
-Supports PIO Mode 4, Master Mode, high performance HDDs
-Supports Ultra DMA/33, Bus Master Mode
-Supports LBA Mode
-Supports high capacity HDDs

What would i be safe going for?

Thanks in advance for the help.
Regards.
Gavin
Click to expand...

Unless Biostar has released a BIOS flash upgrade since the one dated Aug. 99
for this board, your limit for HD sizes is 32 GB - not really up to snuff for
the current generation of hard drives, although you may be able to find a few
20's and 30's out there still. That upgrade, old as it is, is the most recent
I have been able to find.
There are a couple of other potential problems with this board that you might
want to take into account, depending on your other plans:
There are some complaints about the UDMA feature not working properly with
windows 98, which, in case you're going to use this board with a modest PIII
(say a 500 - 550), and anything less than 256 Mg memory, would otherwise
probably be your best option. This lack of UDMA in 98 means such a system
would probably be intolerably slow running XP, but won't be as much faster as
normal with 98. You may need to look at Win 2000 or Me, or a Linux distro to
find a really optimal OS for this board with some processor
and memory configurations.
Some people have reported getting this board to take up to 512 Meg RAM,
but others have claimed it only recognizes 384 M tops. This probably reflects
different RAM makers and combinations. Even 384 Meg would let you run XP
fairly well, but if you are planning to put several 128 and 256 Meg. sticks
in there, test the combinations carefully.
 
Gavin said:
Hi,

I have a M6TBA mobo. I've read the manual and it says it will support a
high capacity HDD but does not allude to what a high capacity drive might
be?
Click to expand...

"High capacity drive" means whatever the author considered "high capacity"
to be when they wrote the statement and the last Biostar BIOS update for
that motherboard is dated 1999/11/29 so it's a dern good guess they don't
mean a year 2005 "high capacity drive."

Under the heading PCI Enhanced IDE Built-In On Board it says:

-Supports four IDE hard disk Drives
-Supports PIO Mode 4, Master Mode, high performance HDDs
-Supports Ultra DMA/33, Bus Master Mode
-Supports LBA Mode
-Supports high capacity HDDs

What would i be safe going for?
Click to expand...

"Safe" would probably be < 32 gig.

Whether it can handle more I don't know but the next typical 'hump' was 64
gig, and the next was 128 gig, and the last one was 137 gig. It for dern
sure won't do over 137.

I *think* I've seen posts where the owner of one was using a 40 gig drive
so maybe it'll go to the 64 gig hump (which wasn't unusual for other BX
boards of the era, after the latest BIOS update). Do a google and look for
fellow users to see what they've got running.

And, btw, when you check make sure that you know which rev level your board
is (I.E. 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, etc.) as not all have the same capability.
 
is it to replace your existing drive(s)? ie is the operating system going to
be on it? If so, i would buy whatever size drive you like, but go to the
manufacturers site and download the disk tools, make bootable floppies,
install the drive onto the mobo, then boot from floppy and use the utilities
to partition and format the drive. After yoou do this, boot from cd, when
installing xp, select the option to leave the current filing system as is.
 
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