new 80gb hard drive - hard drive tech questions

[leegold]

I have a maxtor ATA133 80GB hard drive, I have not attempted to
fdisk/format it yet. I have a slightly old slot 1 pIII motherboard.
I also have installed a maxtor (really is a Promise brand) ATA133 pci
slot card because the motherboard only supports ATA33.
I plan to multiboot a few different OS's.

Ques. If I boot a WIn98/ME boot disk and attempt to
Fdisk/format the drive and say I can format all 80 GB then
would it be correct to assume my bios can "see" the whole drive?
I'm really asking:
I'm looking for the 1st few steps I should take to make sure everything
is OK and there are no limitations.

Ques. Maxtor provides a MAXblast utility - should I use this?

Ques: Is there a way I can easily determine if a partition I format is
at the end of a cylinder or a side? Even though this is not necessary
w/modern drives I'd like to know how I can figure that out?

Thanks

 

[DS]

I have a maxtor ATA133 80GB hard drive, I have not attempted to
fdisk/format it yet. I have a slightly old slot 1 pIII motherboard.
I also have installed a maxtor (really is a Promise brand) ATA133 pci
slot card because the motherboard only supports ATA33.
I plan to multiboot a few different OS's.

Ques. If I boot a WIn98/ME boot disk and attempt to
Fdisk/format the drive and say I can format all 80 GB then
would it be correct to assume my bios can "see" the whole drive?
I'm really asking:
I'm looking for the 1st few steps I should take to make sure everything
is OK and there are no limitations.

Ques. Maxtor provides a MAXblast utility - should I use this?

Ques: Is there a way I can easily determine if a partition I format is
at the end of a cylinder or a side? Even though this is not necessary
w/modern drives I'd like to know how I can figure that out?

Thanks

If you have it attached to the Maxtor controller the cards bios will see it
just fine. No need to worry about your mobo bios. If you plan to boot from
it you will need to set your bios to boot from scsi though.