new drive in old comp?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Justice
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J

Justice

my friends harddrive has crashed and wanted to know if a new say 40 or
80gb drive work in a k6-2 450 mhz computer?


thanks for your help?
 
Justice said:
my friends harddrive has crashed and wanted to know if a new say 40 or
80gb drive work in a k6-2 450 mhz computer?


thanks for your help?
Click to expand...
yup. It will go in just fine. On the drive manufacturers website, look
into their downloads section, and utilities, and all (I am sure)
manufacturers provide a Drive Overlay software which will allow the
system to use the bigger drive.
Try without the overlay software first. I have installed 60GB drives
into 300Mhz celeron systems without a hiccup.

Wheaty.
 
my friends harddrive has crashed and wanted to know if a new say 40 or
80gb drive work in a k6-2 450 mhz computer?


thanks for your help?
Click to expand...

Yes, one way or another.

Check for a bios update- update the bios if possible as such
an old bios may not be around much longer.

Connect the drive and see if the bios detects whole thing,
entire capacity. If it doesn't you can use a drive overlay
but it may be best to buy an inexpensive PCI IDE controller
card.
 
It will work as long as you do not try to boot from it. Drivers, and
especially hardware related drivers might and probably will not work.

Mich
 
It will work as long as you do not try to boot from it.
Click to expand...

How so?
I've replaced plenty of old system's drives with (at the
time, far larger drives) which booted and ran fine.
 
Michel said:
It will work as long as you do not try to boot from it. Drivers, and
especially hardware related drivers might and probably will not work.

Mich
Click to expand...

The above seems to only apply to Windows NT 4.0 and before, judging from a
note in Thompson & Thompson, Hardware In A Nutshell, pg.439. Apparently
that operating system was limited to 8 GB.

Also, the first version of Windows 95 could only support 2.1 GB in a
partition.

Many motherboards used to have a limit of 8.4 GB. The CPU you mentioned was
popular about the time this limit was lifted by BIOS improvements, so you
could experience them or not, probably not. Don't lose hope, though, even
if you do, because fixes are available:

-- You may be able to upgrade/update your computer's BIOS;
-- Some disk manufacturers provide software overlays like Western Digital's
EZ-BIOS that will make it work; or
-- you can buy a Promise adapter card that will support any ATA drive.

A Compaq Deskpro with K6-2 400 is running in my daughter's room with a 10.2
GB disk without problems, and once you get past that 8.4 GB limit, the next
common limit is 128 GB; so you're probably OK.
 
Many motherboards used to have a limit of 8.4 GB. The CPU you mentioned was
popular about the time this limit was lifted by BIOS improvements, so you
could experience them or not, probably not. Don't lose hope, though, even
if you do, because fixes are available:
Click to expand...

I had a similar problem in my old Biostarmobo that did not detect a
new 80gb drive. Biostar did not have a bios upgrade for this problem.

Finally I located a bios at the following page which worked
flawlessly.

http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/k6plus.htm

HTH
 
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