[Altair607]

I want to install a 200gb harddrive in an hp computer, its about a year old, any chance it has 48bit LBA? When did they start putting that in computer bios, its an athlon 1.4. not very old. I dont have a model number yet, just wondering what the possibilty of it having support for greater then 137gb is, based on only that info.

 

[Altair607]

.......And one more thing, if it were to be partitioned into 2 100GB partitions would that make a difference. If it is not support what kind of card do I need to get for it to work on that computer? Thanks

 

[johnwill]

There is almost no chance, I've installed 200gig drives on two machines, and they have BIOS dates of June and August of 2002, no support. You can use something like the Promise Ultra133 TX2 PCI controller which does handle them, that's how I solved the problem.

FWIW, partitioning doens't solve the problem, the BIOS will only recognize a total of 128gig for a single physical disk.

 

[Altair607]

Thanks for the help saves me a lot of time, was just about to try partitioning, but I guess i'll just go get the controller. Thanks a lot!!!