BIOS 33gb limit

  • Thread starter Thread starter pheasant
  • Start date Start date
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pheasant

Pulled the old 2Gb hd from the Vectra VEi8 after updating the processor
from a Katmai to a tualatin.

Stuck in the 40Gb drive I had laying around. No boot into BIOS, so set
the jumper on it to 32Gb limit. Booted into BIOS smooth as silk.

Right now Win XP Home has created partition size for C as 20GB and is
formatting it.

After windows is all set up on C, and it shows 12Gb as an extra drive,
can I pull the jumper, let it find the extra space on D so I can have
use of all 40?

Hey David, Feb came early. Too much time on my hands. ;)

Thanks

Mark
 
pheasant said:
Pulled the old 2Gb hd from the Vectra VEi8 after updating the processor
from a Katmai to a tualatin.

Stuck in the 40Gb drive I had laying around. No boot into BIOS, so set
the jumper on it to 32Gb limit. Booted into BIOS smooth as silk.

Right now Win XP Home has created partition size for C as 20GB and is
formatting it.

After windows is all set up on C, and it shows 12Gb as an extra drive,
can I pull the jumper, let it find the extra space on D so I can have
use of all 40?
Click to expand...
No.


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My two cents, NO.
The BIOS sets/controls the specs of the hard drive for the operating system.
The only way to get around the BIOS limit is to load the extra driver
software that
at times has been supplied by the hard drive makers.
Disk Drive Overlay is one of the pieces of software that comes to mind.
Or get an add on a newer IDE/ATA controller and put it in a PCI slot.
And run the hard drive off the add on controller.
 
Sounds like you have an old (prior to June 1999) Award BIOS, the only one I
know of with this restriction. Later versions of the Award BIOS do not have
this. Check to see if you can get a BIOS update, which would *probably*
address this issue.

Hth,
Joe
 
pheasant said:
Pulled the old 2Gb hd from the Vectra VEi8 after updating the
processor from a Katmai to a tualatin.

Stuck in the 40Gb drive I had laying around. No boot into BIOS, so
set the jumper on it to 32Gb limit. Booted into BIOS smooth as silk.

Right now Win XP Home has created partition size for C as 20GB and is
formatting it.

After windows is all set up on C, and it shows 12Gb as an extra drive,
can I pull the jumper, let it find the extra space on D so I can have
use of all 40?

Hey David, Feb came early. Too much time on my hands. ;)
Click to expand...

Hi Mark,

As others have mentioned, first try looking for a later BIOS release. I
don't think removing the jumper is an option but you can try, I don't think
you have anything to loose. Maybe you'll have to boot from a floppy/CD each
time and get it to point to the OS partitio on the HDD? I don't know if
that's possible but may be worth looking into.

The best bet though would be to get your hands on a PCI - ATA adapter card.
(and set BIOS to boot from 'SCSI') Not only will it solve this problem but
it should increase performance considerably. Probably better than messing
with the BIOS as you've already been relatively lucky getting the tui to run
in that machine. I'd be inclined to leave the BIOS alone. Or not. <g>
Depends on whether you need the machine to be running or can afford what may
be an extended outage.

Luck,
 
Thanks Guys!

It's unanimous, 12Gb is all the extended drive I will even bother with.
Never use the 20 anyway.
 
Check the HDD manufacturers website. i remember having a similar problem
with an ols computer and a Seagate drive but a download from the site
allowed me to use the full drive, even though the BIOS only seen it's 8GB
limit.
It's worth a try!

Robin
 
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