LBA (48-bit) BIOS support?

[Littleberry]

How do you tell if your BIOS
supports 48-bit (LBA) addressing?

I am using win98se, but, this
question deals with the motherboard
BIOS, not the operating system.

I have seen this question asked,
but I haven't seen a usable
answer yet.

My motherboards are 440bx (epox
and supermicro).

I can't locate any website with
specific information about either
of my motherboards anymore.

Is there a tool anywhere that can
detect the bios LBA support capability?

Littleberry

 

[Eric Gisin]

It is unlikely for 440bx because of the age of the BIOS. I believe support
started in 2002.

 

[Tod]

No way will that motherboard's bios support 48-bit LBA
You would be luck to get a 10GB HD to work with it.

 

[Eric Gisin]

What a moron. Disks were much larger in 2000.

No way will that motherboard's bios support 48-bit LBA
You would be luck to get a 10GB HD to work with it.

 

[Wayne Youngman]

My motherboards are 440bx (epox
and supermicro).

Hi,
I doubt that board supports LBA 48Bit addressing, but hey no sweat! buy an
add-on PCI controller (Promise, Highpoint) that has it. Problem solved. .
..now about your O/S

 

[Tod]

Your right, I now know a 20GB will work.
The 440BX chipset was used back as far as 1999.
WOW you can use the word "Moron", what an Intellect you have show.

 

[John Turco]

What a moron. Disks were much larger in 2000.

Hello, Eric:

Indeed, I bought my original BX mainboard (Tyan S1830S "Tsunami" AT,
with AMI BIOS V2.00.00) in 2000, and it fully supported my Maxtor 13.6GB
and 17.2GB hard disks (1998 and '99 models, respectively), right out of
the box.


Cordially,

 

[Littleberry]

Hi,
I doubt that board supports LBA 48Bit addressing, but hey no sweat! buy an
add-on PCI controller (Promise, Highpoint) that has it. Problem solved. .
.now about your O/S

Wayne,

Oddly enough, that is just what I did - I have Highpoint's Rocket 133S,
which claims to support large hd's (over 137 gig). Now, what is really
curious about this is, while I was finally able to format the 160 gig
by connecting it to the rocket 133s, I could ONLY format it to NTFS,
and only then after downloading service pack #3 (4 hours!) and
installing it. I also had to download the latest rocket drivers.
Even then, however, it would NOT let me partition and format it
to FAT32 - I got an instant error sayding the disk is too big.

The updated FDISK from microsoft specifically disclaims using
it for hd's over 137 gig, so, I am slowly coming to the conclusion
that there is no way to format a hd over 137 gigs to FAT32.

If anyone can do that - please advise how.

My two motherboards both handle 120 gig harddrives without
having to use the rocket, so, the bios is good enough as is
(I replaced the bios chip on both of them a couple of years
ago), but neither supermicro nor epox will have anything
to do anymore with these older mboards, so I am out of luck
ever getting beyond 137 gigs w/o rocket or something like that.

Which means I can only use the over-137 gig harddrives
as NTFS drives under win2000. Not ideal, but better than
nothing.

Littleberry