Will Windows XP (with service pack 2) support a 160 GB HDD?

[Guest]

I apologize in advance for the non-expert's terminology.

I am thinking about changing the 80 GB HDD of my two-year-old notebook with
a Samsung 160 GB one (IDE). Do you think that Windows XP home edition (with
service pack 2) will support it, without the risk of losing data?

And what about the BIOS of the motherboard (an Athlon 64 3000+)? Judging on
the data contained in this message, do you suppose that I should update it?

Thank you in advance for your attention, and sorry in case my doubts are
unjustified (they come from a non-expert's reading of some internet articles).

 

[JS]

Most likely it will without any problem since it is a relatively new laptop.
Windows XP SP2 is not the issue but your PC should checked just to be
certain it supports 48 Bit LBA (drives larger than 137GB).
You can check your PC easily by downloading HD Tune.
http://www.hdtune.com/

Installed and run HD Tune, then click on the 'Info' tab (select your
existing drive from the pull down list and in the Supported Feature list
look for a check mark in the field labeled: 48-bit address) if this is
checked you can use the 160GB drive.

JS

 

[Bigdawg]

I have this same board and never had a problem with it, one post said there
are allot of jumper's, well 2. hopefully its set to auto. then reset the
IDE cable's using the Master/Slave. that board has a problem with cable
select and some devices

 

[~Mike Hollywood]

Hi,
Reading your post i downloaded the hdtune file and ran it on my
system. In the health tab,
It yellow highlighted "reallocated sector count" because
the current count was 100 which was the upper limit for
the worst. The manual said
if anything was yellow to keep an eye on it, back up your data, etc.
Do you happen to know what reallocated sector count is? I
couldn't find it in the manual.
Thanks,
mike

 

[Brett I. Holcomb]

I would assume that it means it had bad sectors in areas that were in
use so it moved these sectors to another area of the drive.

 

[JS]

Those sectors are defective and marked as such, the data located in those
sectors is then moved (re-allocated) to available good sectors.

Speedfan is another tool that reports S.M.A.R.T drive information and
provides a means of comparing your drive against data reported for other
drives of the same type.
http://www.almico.com/sfarticle.php?id=2

JS