P3C-D (Max. HD)

  • Thread starter Thread starter William Katz
  • Start date Start date
W

William Katz

I have a P3C-D motherboard (BIOS 1025 Beta 002), the latest BIOS.
Currently using a Western Digital 100GB HD, which works just fine.

My question is what is the maximum capacity hard drive I can use on this
board? (using the onboard IDE-66) I am thinking about getting a 120GB HD,
or even a 160GB HD if I can use the full capacity?
Thanks.
 
I have a P3C-D motherboard (BIOS 1025 Beta 002), the latest BIOS.
Currently using a Western Digital 100GB HD, which works just fine.

My question is what is the maximum capacity hard drive I can use on this
board? (using the onboard IDE-66) I am thinking about getting a 120GB HD,
or even a 160GB HD if I can use the full capacity?
Thanks.
Click to expand...

The HD-controller for the 820-chipset only support drives up to 128
GB. You should be able to get a PCI HDD-controller quite cheap now --
an advice can be to go for a Serial ATA-solution at the same time.
 
Clas Mehus said:
The HD-controller for the 820-chipset only support drives up to 128
GB. You should be able to get a PCI HDD-controller quite cheap now --
an advice can be to go for a Serial ATA-solution at the same time.
Click to expand...

The answer is the skys the limit (up to the maximum the OS can handle) *if*
you're using Windows XP SP 1 or Win 2K SP 4 or higher - I'm using a P3C-E
(with its version of 1025 Beta 2 BIOS - you'd think Asus would get round to
a final version by now - 2 years after that Beta was released) with a new
Maxtor 250 GB ATA 133 drive and the windows installation detected the full
capacity of the drive (although NOT the mobo BIOS which sees it as an 8 GB
drive when detection is set to auto) - result everything in windows says I'm
using a 233 GB drive and it works perfectly! Its true that the 820 chipset
only supports 28 bit LBA (and therefore has that 137 GB hardware limit,
Windows XP SP 1, Win2K SP 4 and Intels Application accelerator get around
this via software though. Have a nosey here:
http://support.intel.com/support/chipsets/iaa/sb/CS-009299.htm Note that if
you install XP with a CDROM thats already at SP1 level or higher it will be
a seemless installation (just done one today) and the Intel Application
Accelerator wont even be required - its a bit different with Win 9.x/ME
though as outlined at that Intel website. I've not tried it under 98 SE yet
as I don't have any 3rd party partitioning software - I'm also unsure if it
will work without native BIOS support, even with the Intel Application
Accelerator. Before this 250 GB drive I had a 120 GB Samsung and that was
working perfectly in the machine (and was correctly detected by the BIOS).
Its now relegated to my server for RAID with another identical drive.

William shouldn't need to get a seperate controller card as long as the
right OS is used.

Paul
 
"Paul Murphy" said:
The answer is the skys the limit (up to the maximum the OS can handle) *if*
you're using Windows XP SP 1 or Win 2K SP 4 or higher - I'm using a P3C-E
(with its version of 1025 Beta 2 BIOS - you'd think Asus would get round to
a final version by now - 2 years after that Beta was released) with a new
Maxtor 250 GB ATA 133 drive and the windows installation detected the full
capacity of the drive (although NOT the mobo BIOS which sees it as an 8 GB
drive when detection is set to auto) - result everything in windows says I'm
using a 233 GB drive and it works perfectly! Its true that the 820 chipset
only supports 28 bit LBA (and therefore has that 137 GB hardware limit,
Windows XP SP 1, Win2K SP 4 and Intels Application accelerator get around
this via software though. Have a nosey here:
http://support.intel.com/support/chipsets/iaa/sb/CS-009299.htm Note that if
you install XP with a CDROM thats already at SP1 level or higher it will be
a seemless installation (just done one today) and the Intel Application
Accelerator wont even be required - its a bit different with Win 9.x/ME
though as outlined at that Intel website. I've not tried it under 98 SE yet
as I don't have any 3rd party partitioning software - I'm also unsure if it
will work without native BIOS support, even with the Intel Application
Accelerator. Before this 250 GB drive I had a 120 GB Samsung and that was
working perfectly in the machine (and was correctly detected by the BIOS).
Its now relegated to my server for RAID with another identical drive.

William shouldn't need to get a seperate controller card as long as the
right OS is used.

Paul
Click to expand...

Paul, have you tested your drive ? I recommend using some gigabyte
sized files, and fill your 250GB disk with files. Some people find that
the first file copied that passes the 137GB mark, leads to file system
corruption, and that means they aren't really able to use that large
a disk. So, test your disk before retiring the old disk. It would
be a sad thing if you spent months filling the disk with MP3 files,
only to discover one day that the file system was gone. Before doing
this test, back up any files on the 250GB drive, in case the file system
_is_ going to get corrupted.

The trick is, if your system only supports 137GB, when it attempts to
write to a location at 137+ GB, the address "rolls over" to address
zero, and the beginning of the disk is erased by the data being
copied. That is why the file system will get corrupted, and that
is what you are testing for.

After all the files are copied to fill the volume, you can use a
checksum program to sum the contents of the files. If you used
the same file over and over again, the checksum for each file
should be the same. This will build confidence in the integrity
of the disk itself. I have tested my last four disk purchases this
way.

HTH,
Paul
 
Paul said:
Paul, have you tested your drive ? I recommend using some gigabyte
sized files, and fill your 250GB disk with files. Some people find that
the first file copied that passes the 137GB mark, leads to file system
corruption, and that means they aren't really able to use that large
a disk. So, test your disk before retiring the old disk. It would
be a sad thing if you spent months filling the disk with MP3 files,
only to discover one day that the file system was gone. Before doing
this test, back up any files on the 250GB drive, in case the file system
_is_ going to get corrupted.

The trick is, if your system only supports 137GB, when it attempts to
write to a location at 137+ GB, the address "rolls over" to address
zero, and the beginning of the disk is erased by the data being
copied. That is why the file system will get corrupted, and that
is what you are testing for.

After all the files are copied to fill the volume, you can use a
checksum program to sum the contents of the files. If you used
the same file over and over again, the checksum for each file
should be the same. This will build confidence in the integrity
of the disk itself. I have tested my last four disk purchases this
way.

HTH,
Paul
Click to expand...

Thats a good point although having read up on the Intel Application
Accelerator, I don't believe its relevant with the Intel 820 chipset under
Win2K or XP with the relevant SPs. I haven't loaded up more that 137 GB on
it yet but soon will.... I have an ATI Radeon 8500DV and use this as a PVR
(for recording TV programs). I'll record (as full resolution AVIs) the next
couple of hours of TV - that'll quickly (and easily) fill it up and I'll
attempt to watch them and report back.

Paul
 
Back
Top