P3B-F

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chris

Anyone know if I can use a Maxtor 200GB hard drive with a P3B-F board?
I have an 80GB in there now but need a new drive and would like a 200GB
for the low cost per space of it. Would I need a controller card? If so
what do the cards go for?
 
chris said:
Anyone know if I can use a Maxtor 200GB hard drive with a P3B-F board?
I have an 80GB in there now but need a new drive and would like a 200GB
for the low cost per space of it. Would I need a controller card? If so
what do the cards go for?
Click to expand...

137GB is the upper limit, so the largest supported drive is 120GB.

http://www.asuscom.de/support/FAQ/faq076_32gb_ide_hdd.htm

Here are some sample controller cards.

"PROMISE ULTRA133TX2 PCI IDE Controller Card"
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816102027

"PROMISE ULTRA100TX2 PCI IDE Controller Card" (flash to latest BIOS)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816102026

Paul
 
It will work!Natively you are right you cannot install a 200GB drive it
wil show as 137GB. Maxtor has an istallations software cd that will
parttion your drive safely to a 200GB. You can then install your OS.
This is assuming you are using XP w/sp1 or w2k pro w/ sp3. I do not
knopw about ME and 98 but why bother on those.
 
Francine said:
It will work!Natively you are right you cannot install a 200GB drive it
wil show as 137GB. Maxtor has an istallations software cd that will
parttion your drive safely to a 200GB. You can then install your OS.
This is assuming you are using XP w/sp1 or w2k pro w/ sp3. I do not
knopw about ME and 98 but why bother on those.
Click to expand...

I believe the ATA/ATAPI standard defines a register on the
disk controller board, that defines the maximum address on
the disk. That register can be used to "clip" the size of
the disk drive. Maybe that is what the Maxtor utility is
adjusting.

But a controller card will allow you to use all of the disk drive.
And the controller card will also give better performance
than the IDE interface on the motherboard.

(BTW: The FAQ page moved to -

http://rma.asus.de/support/FAQ/faq076_32gb_ide_hdd.htm )

Paul
 
I decided to try it based on what the other person wrote and the cd
seemed to work (I think). Here is the thing I know that there is a
binary and a decimal version of reporting the disk size. Would it make
sense that Windows shows a capacity of 203,921,108,992 or 189GB?
The manufacturer says this is a 200GB drive. Is there that much of a
difference in binary to decimal that I loose 11GB? This is a lot to
loose.
 
"chris" said:
also do you know of an english version of that Asus site?
Click to expand...

The FAQ pages on the German site are unique. You won't
find them anywhere else, or translated to a different
language.

I use babelfish.altavista.com when my German reading
skills let me down :-)

Paul
 
chris said:
I decided to try it based on what the other person wrote and the cd
seemed to work (I think). Here is the thing I know that there is a
binary and a decimal version of reporting the disk size. Would it make
sense that Windows shows a capacity of 203,921,108,992 or 189GB?
The manufacturer says this is a 200GB drive. Is there that much of a
difference in binary to decimal that I loose 11GB? This is a lot to
loose.
Click to expand...

Sounds pretty normal. After all, it is a lot more than 137GB.

This site has some info about the 48 bit thing. Just _do not_
buy a BIOS chip from them (as that is what they appear to be
selling with this site). It is pointless for most Asus
customers (you've already paid for BIOS upgrades).

http://www.48bitlba.com/reference.htm

In particular, read item #4 here:

http://www.48bitlba.com/faq.htm
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/bios/over_DDO.htm

I'm curious how a DDO can work in this case. Say the OS is not
48 bit ready, how will the DDO prevent the disk driver from
doing stuff in 28 bit mode ? Maybe the DDO solves the problem
of how the BIOS accesses the disk, but I don't get how it can
fix a broken situation with the OS (the OS won't use the BIOS
to access the disk, when sitting in the desktop).

As I'm the cautious type, I would fill the disk with 1GB files,
just to make sure it works OK. Perhaps if you are restoring from
another information source, you'll get a chance to test whether
that partition can really hold more than 137GB or not.

Paul
 
Paul said:
that partition can really hold more than 137GB or not.

Paul
Click to expand...


Hi Paul!


Does the BX works flawlessly, when formatting to the standard-limit
(137GB)?




Best Regards,

Daniel Mandic
 
chris said:
also do you know of an english version of that Asus site?
Click to expand...

They do have a similar article somewhere on the "normal" Asus support
web, which seems to be more up to date. I just couldn't find it because
the server was too busy at the moment. You know, I hate the sucky web
pages that mainboard manufacturers dare to toture people with. You would
think that a company mostly relying on engineering could have a sleek,
functional, intuitive and fast website where people can find quickly
what they are looking for - black-on-white information on current and
past products (including some decent photos - those have been bigger in
the past), FAQs and other support stuff, BIOS updates and whatnot. On
the Asus Germany web site, I cannot even select Products > Motherboards
because the pull-down menu disappears behind a Flash animation. *sigh*
</rant>

Stephan
 
chris said:
I decided to try it based on what the other person wrote and the cd
seemed to work (I think). Here is the thing I know that there is a
binary and a decimal version of reporting the disk size. Would it make
sense that Windows shows a capacity of 203,921,108,992 or 189GB?
The manufacturer says this is a 200GB drive. Is there that much of a
difference in binary to decimal that I loose 11GB? This is a lot to
loose.
Click to expand...

There is no loss - it's simply a discrepancy in the definition of a
Gigabyte.

Hard drive manufacturers advertise Gigabytes as one billion (1,000,000,000)
bytes.

Windows measures a Gigabyte as 2^30 (1,073,741,824) bytes.

So, the hard drive manufacturer will say you have a 203 GB drive
(203,921,108,992 / 1,000,000,000)

Windows will report the capacity as 189.91 GB
(203,921,108,992 / 1,073,741,824)
 
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