No drives larger than 137Gig on ABIT IS7 ?

[George Adams]

I know there is a "137G limit" that prevents computers from (easily) working
with drives that are > 137G, although my understanding of the details is a
bit shaky. Nevertheless, I bought a Western Digital 180Gig drive, which
comes with a Promise Ultra100TX controller card. The instructions
accompanying the drive tell me to install the card in my computer and plug
the HDD into it to circumvent the problem.

Before I tried that, however, I thought I'd hook it up directly to one of
the IDE connectors on my new ABIS IS7. I figured if there was any hardware
and/or BIOS limitation that prevented older motherboards from working with
large hard drives, surely that wouldn't be the case with a new motherboard.

However, when I tried to partition the drive, all the OS could see was
137Gig.

So I guess I have to use the Promise card after all. Is there some reason
that the IS7 can't handle large hard drives using its native IDE
controllers? Is that a problem with all motherboards?

Thanks to anyone who can explain it to me.

 

[Ralph Wade Phillips]

Howdy!

I know there is a "137G limit" that prevents computers from (easily) working
with drives that are > 137G, although my understanding of the details is a
bit shaky. Nevertheless, I bought a Western Digital 180Gig drive, which
comes with a Promise Ultra100TX controller card. The instructions
accompanying the drive tell me to install the card in my computer and plug
the HDD into it to circumvent the problem.

Sure enough. That's what it's there for.

Before I tried that, however, I thought I'd hook it up directly to one of
the IDE connectors on my new ABIS IS7. I figured if there was any hardware
and/or BIOS limitation that prevented older motherboards from working with
large hard drives, surely that wouldn't be the case with a new

motherboard.

Ahem. Unless the motherboard EXPLICITLY supports LBA-48, you won't
see but 137G of it.

However, when I tried to partition the drive, all the OS could see was
137Gig.
Yep.


So I guess I have to use the Promise card after all. Is there some reason
that the IS7 can't handle large hard drives using its native IDE
controllers? Is that a problem with all motherboards?

Most, yep. There's a few that do LBA-48 on the motherboard IDE
ports. And, since it's new and sexy, the MB manufacturer will most
definately scream that it's got it <B-)

Then again, if you're running XP SP1 or higher, or W2K SP4 or
higher, they'll see the drive anyway on most MBs.

RwP

 

[John]

I have a abit board and there was a BIOS update to see hard drives bigger
than 137g

 

[John Lewis]

I know there is a "137G limit" that prevents computers from (easily) working
with drives that are > 137G, although my understanding of the details is a
bit shaky. Nevertheless, I bought a Western Digital 180Gig drive, which
comes with a Promise Ultra100TX controller card. The instructions
accompanying the drive tell me to install the card in my computer and plug
the HDD into it to circumvent the problem.

Before I tried that, however, I thought I'd hook it up directly to one of
the IDE connectors on my new ABIS IS7. I figured if there was any hardware
and/or BIOS limitation that prevented older motherboards from working with
large hard drives, surely that wouldn't be the case with a new motherboard.

However, when I tried to partition the drive, all the OS could see was
137Gig.

Have you upgraded your OS ?

Partition Magic 8.0 is a far better tool to see what is actually
going on. Especially using the PM backup boot-floppies, which sees all
that the MB hardware sees (via BIOS ) and can be used to create and
format all partitions with the correct file system(s) before loading
any OS.

PM8.0 has just one limitation, it cannot create partitions larger than

160 GByte on any disk , although it can readily partition drives
larger than that. In any case, anybody that creates partitions
anywhere near160 Gbytes in size needs a cranial examination.
Nasty s/w and/or viruses can readily destroy individual partitions;
but arefar less likely to make a whole disk non-recoverable.
I would not like to be around to hear the user's screams when
a 160Gbyte C: partition gets corrupted..........

So I guess I have to use the Promise card after all. Is there some reason
that the IS7 can't handle large hard drives using its native IDE
controllers? Is that a problem with all motherboards?

Thanks to anyone who can explain it to me.

The latest IS-7 BIOS 1.7 addresses an issue with the ICH5 SATA not
recognizing drive sizes greater than 137GByte, but the PATA should be
just fine. The MB has 48-bit addressing.

John Lewis

 

[TomG]

if a controller supports 48 bit LBA, it supports drives larger than 137 gig
and most newer computer bios sets have that capability. including the IS7.
your OS needs to have 48 bit LBA support as well and XP did not when it was
first released. XP sp1 or some registry tweaks prior to sp1 would enable 48
bit LBA but I cannot speak to 98 or 98SE.

--

Thomas Geery
Network+ certified

ftp://geerynet.d2g.com
ftp://68.98.180.8 Abit Mirror <----- Cable modem IP
This IP is dynamic so it *could* change!...
over 120,000 FTP users served!
^^^^^^^

 

[Al Dykes]

if a controller supports 48 bit LBA, it supports drives larger than 137 gig
and most newer computer bios sets have that capability. including the IS7.
your OS needs to have 48 bit LBA support as well and XP did not when it was
first released. XP sp1 or some registry tweaks prior to sp1 would enable 48
bit LBA but I cannot speak to 98 or 98SE.

--

Nobody's mentioned that the limitis for the boot partition. Once the
OS takes control it can access partitions much larger than the boot
limitation. You can make a small (8GB ?) boot partition and them keep
all your apps and data on the second partition, appx 170gb in your
case.

 

[Jens C. Hansen [Odense]]

if a controller supports 48 bit LBA, it supports drives larger than 137 gig
and most newer computer bios sets have that capability. including the IS7.
your OS needs to have 48 bit LBA support as well and XP did not when it was
first released. XP sp1 or some registry tweaks prior to sp1 would enable 48
bit LBA

Actually, even installing SP1 for WinXP does not enable 48-bit LBA.
A registry-setting needs to be changed also.

The only time when no registry changes are needed, is in the case when
WinXP has been installed from a source that already had SP1 integrated.

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=303013

 

[TomG]

hmmm... I have seen the Knowledge Base article regarding 48 bit LBA and I
coulda sworn that it referred to a registry setting for PRE-sp1
configurations but I could easily be wrong. I know XP sees my 230-some-odd
gig raid 0 array on ICH5R SATA but that is probably not a safe comparison
since I partitioned the space.

--

Thomas Geery
Network+ certified

ftp://geerynet.d2g.com
ftp://68.98.180.8 Abit Mirror <----- Cable modem IP
This IP is dynamic so it *could* change!...
over 120,000 FTP users served!
^^^^^^^

 

[Jens C. Hansen [Odense]]

hmmm... I have seen the Knowledge Base article regarding 48 bit LBA and I
coulda sworn that it referred to a registry setting for PRE-sp1
configurations but I could easily be wrong. I know XP sees my 230-some-odd
gig raid 0 array on ICH5R SATA but that is probably not a safe comparison
since I partitioned the space.

RAID is usually done through a SCSI-emulation layer, and SCSI has had
support for larger disks (and arrays) for many years.

 

[George Adams]

Thanks to everyone who replied. As a followup to my own message, I've
belatedly discovered this page:

http://fae.abit.com.tw/eng/faq/generic/check160gb.htm

which contains this:

Does ABIT motherboard support harddisk larger than 160GB? (updated Mar
2003)
- All of our new model will come with 48-bit LBA supporting.

So it looks like the IS7 *does* support large hard drives, and it was
probably just the ancient kernel/partioner that comes with Debian "woody"
(3.0r2) that was the culprit.

I guess my last question is, assuming the OS can support it, is there any
advantage in using the Promise Ultra100TX card supplied by Western Digitial?
Or is it best to use the onboard IDE controller?

Thanks again.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

"George Adams" asked:

I guess my last question is, assuming the OS can support it,
is there any advantage in using the Promise Ultra100TX card
supplied by Western Digitial?
Or is it best to use the onboard IDE controller?

For slightly quicker backups between hard drives (and other
large file transfers), add the Promise card and put each hard drive
on a separate IDE channel (i.e. no Master/Slave pairings).

*TimDaniels*

 

[TomG]

yup... didn't know if the limitation would still be there since the SATA
controller is IDE but you are correct, it shows as a SCSI controller in most
cases...

--

Thomas Geery
Network+ certified

ftp://geerynet.d2g.com
ftp://68.98.180.8 Abit Mirror <----- Cable modem IP
This IP is dynamic so it *could* change!...
over 120,000 FTP users served!
^^^^^^^