Large hard drive support

[Paul Gallion]

I have an older PC. It's an HP 433 mHz running Phoenix bios 4.0 dated
1985-1998. I need it to support two, 250 gig HDDs. I did a google searchh
and found conflicting information as to the best method.
BIOS flash, new I/O board or an overlay program. I really don't want to go
the overlay route.
Can anyone advise me as to what is really the best way to acomplish this?

Thanks all,

Paul

 

[Ben Myers]

Paul,

This is a very tricky problem. On balance, it may be advisable to get a more
modern computer with better hard disk BIOS and PCI support. Why?

First, HP rarely offers a flash BIOS update for its motherboards. When it does,
the update corrects glaring defects rather than enhancing a feature or two.
BTW, this is typical industry practice, and I can't fault HP for it.

Second, check the wattage of the computer's power supply, whether it is a
Pavilion, Kayak, or Vectra. A pair of 250GB disk drives may cause the system to
draw more wattage than the power supply can sustain, especially if the system is
a Pavilion with its typical anemic power supply.

Third, probably the best (or at least the most widely used) I/O card is sold
under the Promise brand name. As I recall, it requires compliance of the
motherboard with revision 2.2 of the PCI specification. HP provides little or
no detailed info about its motherboards. Your only recourse is to try a Promise
card and see if it works.

Finally, if system performance has any importance here, the very fast modern
disk drives will be hamstrung by the system's slow processor.

You're right. Avoid BIOS overlays for any business production environment.
They are often problematic, especially when data recovery and troubleshooting
are involved... Ben Myers

 

[John .]

The bottom line economics is: If you can afford to buy 2 250GB hard
drives, then you can afford a decent PC with adequate power supply and
adequate bios to support 500GB of data.

Even if it worked for awhile, do you want to trust 500GB of data to a
ancient PC?

I'm not chastising here, just being economically realistic. The big
picture.

 

[Rod Speed]

I have an older PC. It's an HP 433 mHz running Phoenix bios
4.0 dated 1985-1998. I need it to support two, 250 gig HDDs.
I did a google searchh and found conflicting information as to
the best method. BIOS flash, new I/O board or an overlay
program. I really don't want to go the overlay route.

Can anyone advise me as to what is really the best way to acomplish this?

There is no black and white best.

If you can update the motherboard bios to support drives over 120GB.
That approach is the cleanest, but isnt completely risk free. You can end
up with an unusable motherboard if you get a power failure when flashing.

The biosed card for the hard drives is a pretty good approach as long
as you have a spare slot for the card, but is obviously the most expensive
approach. No big deal tho with what you've spent on those drives. Not
absolutely guaranteed to work tho, you can have problems with them.

If you dont want to boot from the drives, you can just not list them
in the motherboard bios drive table and have Win find them in the
boot phase and that works fine with XP with SP1 installed.

 

[Bill Wolff]

Hi John... Well two 250GB HD will probably run you about $500. So
how much are we talking about for the decent PC? I'm not disagreeing
with you, but I am just curious.

As I hear people all of the time speak poorly of cheap computers
that are either costly to upgrade or upgrading them are impossible
for the most part. But I feel otherwise, as I think it is cheaper to
upgrade by purchasing a whole new cheap (well not totally cheap)
than upgrading your older one.

While I try to practice this in my own life, but I end up doing
otherwise in a matter of time. First of course, more memory is
probably a good thing. Then later, a larger hard drive and then I'll
be set. Although later still, maybe a new video card, then a new
sound card, and maybe a new v.92 modem. Next thing you know is you
just put in three times more than you would have for a new computer.

Funny how that works, eh?



Bill




The bottom line economics is: If you can afford to buy 2 250GB hard
drives, then you can afford a decent PC with adequate power supply and
adequate bios to support 500GB of data.

Even if it worked for awhile, do you want to trust 500GB of data to a
ancient PC?

I'm not chastising here, just being economically realistic. The big
picture.

 

[Rod Speed]

Well two 250GB HD will probably run you about $500.
So how much are we talking about for the decent PC?
I'm not disagreeing with you, but I am just curious.

A hell of a lot less than that for a new
case/PS/integrated motherboard and cpu.

As I hear people all of the time speak poorly of cheap
computers that are either costly to upgrade or upgrading
them are impossible for the most part. But I feel otherwise,
as I think it is cheaper to upgrade by purchasing a whole new
cheap (well not totally cheap) than upgrading your older one.

The other approach is a cheap basic new system and move
most of the extra stuff like optical drives etc to the new system.

While I try to practice this in my own life, but I end up doing
otherwise in a matter of time. First of course, more memory is
probably a good thing. Then later, a larger hard drive and then I'll
be set. Although later still, maybe a new video card, then a new
sound card, and maybe a new v.92 modem. Next thing you know is you
just put in three times more than you would have for a new computer.

Sure, but a sensible choice of integrated
new motherboard avoids most of that.

Funny how that works, eh?

Yes, you do need to be a bit careful there.

 

[Eric Gisin]

Clueless. Buying a new PC is pointless.

Just get a controller with large drive support.

 

[Lil' Dave]

Don't think a current bios update will fit your current bios chip and cmos.
Not enough address space.
Overlays suck.
HPs tend to crap the bed when adding anything of any importance.
One choice left.
Dave

 

[James Andrus]

I concurr. I spent a week trying to get a 80G HD to work on a HP Pavilion
with a 366 Mhz Celeron. It was uterly confusing. The bios seemed to
recognnize the full 80G, so the installation software wouldn't install an
overlay. When I opened W98, only half the HD was usable (I could access it
all in DOS). The unusable part was operating in MSDOS Compatibility Mode.
Now I am no expert, but when this mode came up on a different system, I was
able to install additional drivers from the MB manufacturer. Not so with
HP -- they offer nothing but fixes for defects. I have not been able to
find anything about the motherbord except the processor and chipset numbers.
Lets face it, buying a HP computer is fine if you want an appliance that
works (everything they put in there has been tested to work together), but
it is not what you want if you plan to do huge upgrades down the road. They
don't want to support that. It is an appliance. You take it out of the box
and turn it on.

Jim Andrus

Paul,

This is a very tricky problem. On balance, it may be advisable to get a more
modern computer with better hard disk BIOS and PCI support. Why?

First, HP rarely offers a flash BIOS update for its motherboards. When it does,
the update corrects glaring defects rather than enhancing a feature or two.
BTW, this is typical industry practice, and I can't fault HP for it.

Second, check the wattage of the computer's power supply, whether it is a
Pavilion, Kayak, or Vectra. A pair of 250GB disk drives may cause the system to
draw more wattage than the power supply can sustain, especially if the system is
a Pavilion with its typical anemic power supply.

Third, probably the best (or at least the most widely used) I/O card is sold
under the Promise brand name. As I recall, it requires compliance of the
motherboard with revision 2.2 of the PCI specification. HP provides little or
no detailed info about its motherboards. Your only recourse is to try a Promise
card and see if it works.

Finally, if system performance has any importance here, the very fast modern
disk drives will be hamstrung by the system's slow processor.

You're right. Avoid BIOS overlays for any business production environment.
They are often problematic, especially when data recovery and troubleshooting
are involved... Ben Myers

 

[Arno Wagner]

I have an older PC. It's an HP 433 mHz running Phoenix bios 4.0 dated
1985-1998. I need it to support two, 250 gig HDDs. I did a google searchh
and found conflicting information as to the best method.
BIOS flash, new I/O board or an overlay program. I really don't want to go
the overlay route.
Can anyone advise me as to what is really the best way to acomplish this?

I made good experiences with a Promise 100TX2 controller. It has a
BIOS that is LBA48 capable and supports drives far larger than 250GB.

There might be problems booting from it (I had none with an older AMD
K6-2 -board from Epox), in which case you will need a third disk as
boot disk on the ''normal'' IDE.

Arno

 

[Eric Gisin]

You are no expert, you are clueless. You don't buy a new computer, you buy a
IDE controller.

 

[Eric Gisin]

Oh my god, someone who recommends Promise. Only an HP owner would stoop so
low.

 

[Ben Myers]

Figure $60 for a new mid-tower case with Pentium 4 capable power supply. Figure
$50 - $70 for a Pentium 4 motherboard with integrated video and Ethernet. Add
256MB of DDR memory for $35 or $40. Add an inexpensive but perfectly useful
Socket 478 Celeron processor, 2GHz or more, for $50. A floppy drive? $10. A
CD-ROM drive? $25.

Total for a new and more reliable system $250 before buying and installing a
pair of 250GB drives. Seems to me like $250 is a small price to pay for
reliable and un-kludged hardware to go with those 250GB drives. But, that is a
big picture view. We all lack the even bigger picture view of what is the
intended use for the computer with 2x250GB disk drives... Ben Myers

 

[Eric Gisin]

****ing clueless. Anyone who spends 50-70 bux for a mainboard will not get a
more reliable system, they will get a piece of junk. Get a clue, Benny.

 

[Stefaan A Eeckels]

Oh my god, someone who recommends Promise. Only an HP owner would stoop
so low.

What would you recommend?

 

[Elector]

****ing clueless. Anyone who spends 50-70 bux for a mainboard will not get a
more reliable system, they will get a piece of junk. Get a clue, Benny.

It would seem the only thing you can do is argue with swear words.
Mighty big of you huh? In this same thread you state to have the
poster get a "controller card" and then when Ben states Promise is one
of the card makers you come out with your swear words and crap
posting.

You are a troll as it is plain to see. Go back under your bridge
little troll no one here to play with today.

Either give better advice or STFU. HAND

Elector

 

[Bill Wolff]

Oh I don't know about that? As I have a HP 8655c (533MHZ) machine and it came with a 30GB HD. I flashed the Phoenix BIOS a few years
ago for Windows 2000 support. And about three months ago I purchased a Maxtor 120GB HD and I popped it in and it works great!

I also added a sound card, a video card, 5 port USB card, a TV/FM radio card conected by USB, DVD+RW, DVD-ROM and an external modem.
And everything works great and I couldn't be happier!

Bill



Don't think a current bios update will fit your current bios chip and cmos.
Not enough address space.
Overlays suck.
HPs tend to crap the bed when adding anything of any importance.
One choice left.
Dave

 

[Ben Myers]

Guess again. I don't own any HP computers. I repair the darn things, along
with just about any other brand. I build and use my own white box computers.

Okay, Eric, so you are not a fan of Promise. Please edify us, in your infinite
wisdom, as to your recommended disk controller... Ben Myers

 

[Eric Gisin]

Guess again. I don't own any HP computers. I repair the darn things, along
with just about any other brand. I build and use my own white box computers.

Okay, Eric, so you are not a fan of Promise. Please edify us, in your infinite
wisdom, as to your recommended disk controller... Ben Myers

SiI 3112 for SATA, earlier models for ATA. SiI makes the chip, others make the
card.

 

[Eric Gisin]

Benny.

It would seem the only thing you can do is argue with swear words.
Mighty big of you huh? In this same thread you state to have the
poster get a "controller card" and then when Ben states Promise is one
of the card makers you come out with your swear words and crap
posting.

Yes, Promise is a terrible controller. Past problems with data corruption,
interrupt sharing. Current cards are not plug and play so you cannot use more
than one in a system.

You are a troll as it is plain to see. Go back under your bridge
little troll no one here to play with today.

Benny is an fool for telling the guy to buy a new system or crappy mainboard
instead of just a controller.

So are you for agreeing with him. Tough shit if that offends your
sensibilities.