120GB harddrive woes
I bought the Western Digital 120GB w/8MB cache recently. The bios on my ASUS P2B motherboard (yes I know it's old to still use Pentium 2 mobo) wouldn't recognize the drive even though it supports the ATA100 interface.
I bought the Western Digital 120GB w/8MB cache recently. The bios on my ASUS P2B motherboard (yes I know it's old to still use Pentium 2 mobo) wouldn't recognize the drive even though it supports the ATA100 interface. So I flashed the BIOS with the latest version and it still wouldn't recognize it. I've determine that the mobo doesn't support large harddrives. I've resort to adjust the jumpers then use EZ-BIOS to report the correct size. But EZ-BIOS warned me that it doesn't operate under WinXP. My current install of WinXP Pro keep on freezing on the login screen. It'll just say welcome on the screen but no user accounts would show up. I have to reinstall XP Pro.
Now I put the harddrive in an old system with Win98 and use it for storage. Just remember to make sure that your BIOS can recognize large harddrives before buying one.
Now I put the harddrive in an old system with Win98 and use it for storage. Just remember to make sure that your BIOS can recognize large harddrives before buying one.
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Before buying anything I´d check if the OS you´re using can access all of the disk space. If the BIOS incorrectly detects the size of your new hdd doesn´t mean your Operating System does so, too. Especially the NT based Windows versions are very good in detecting the correct size. It even detects my 3x 120GB IBM hdds even thou there´s no entry for them in the BIOS.
I don't recall that the Western Digital's support page mention anything about controllers at all. I am sure all the new motherboards out now should detect the harddrive without additional hardware (ATA-133 controller) and software (EZ-BIOS). I could just buy the ATA-100 controller since Maxtor is the only company that has ATA-133 harddrives. The performance is not too significant when compared to ATA-100.
I thought the OS derive information about the system through BIOS (date and time, amount of RAM, CPU type and speed, etc.). So how can the OS (I am using XP Pro) report something that the BIOS incorrectly detected? The harddrive only came with one jumper on Cable Select and my computer couldn't make it past the second bootup screen. I add in another jumper like WD's page suggested but now it is smaller than the actual size. The correct size is reports only after I installed EZ-BIOS. It did ask me an I going to install WinXP on the drive. If you chose YES then it will tell you that EZ-BIOS doesn't work with XP and the installation will stop. Therefore I chose NO and format the drive to FAT32.
I thought the OS derive information about the system through BIOS (date and time, amount of RAM, CPU type and speed, etc.). So how can the OS (I am using XP Pro) report something that the BIOS incorrectly detected? The harddrive only came with one jumper on Cable Select and my computer couldn't make it past the second bootup screen. I add in another jumper like WD's page suggested but now it is smaller than the actual size. The correct size is reports only after I installed EZ-BIOS. It did ask me an I going to install WinXP on the drive. If you chose YES then it will tell you that EZ-BIOS doesn't work with XP and the installation will stop. Therefore I chose NO and format the drive to FAT32.
Actually not all of them supports it, and your OS doesn't make any difference. If you are using NTFS, which i suppose you do, it can support up to 4 TB's or something. And your OS acceses the HDD via the File system. So unless you are using a retarded W98 or Dos 6.22 no problems there, even then, you can multi-partition it or download the support files (like ez-bios) from WD website (they should have been supplied with the drive). If you wanna use it, just buy an ATA 133 Controller and you are in game.
Speed is not the only difference on your HDD, but also the sector sizes and head counts etc. are outside the range of your current bios (I don't wanna get in to all technical details, not that i can remember most, do a web search if you are really curious.). if and when you install a ATA 133 controller all your problems will be solved. BTW speed increase of course is not significant, it wasn't significant when you upgraded from ATA 66 to 100 either.
Speed is not the only difference on your HDD, but also the sector sizes and head counts etc. are outside the range of your current bios (I don't wanna get in to all technical details, not that i can remember most, do a web search if you are really curious.). if and when you install a ATA 133 controller all your problems will be solved. BTW speed increase of course is not significant, it wasn't significant when you upgraded from ATA 66 to 100 either.
