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| Thread ID: 35613 | 2003-07-17 05:43:00 | Harddrive Upgrade - What size? | Smurf (506) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 160504 | 2003-07-17 05:43:00 | P166 MMX 256RAM running W98SE I currently have a 3gigHDD and would like to upgrade to one with more capacity. My computer is a PC Discovery 580 with a P5TX-B motherboard. What would be the capacity of a new hard drive that would be acceptable to this computer(motherboard or whatever governs these things) ? Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks. |
Smurf (506) | ||
| 160505 | 2003-07-17 06:23:00 | Bad news is you will struggle to buy anything new that is less that 20Gb. Good news is that you should be able to see something up to 10Gb, I think, but win98 will limit partition size. Not sure how large but might be around 4Gb. Try to sleeze one off a friend. They are worth nothing. I trashed a 2Gb this morning, that was playing up. robo. |
robo (205) | ||
| 160506 | 2003-07-17 06:46:00 | Have a browse around the shops. They might have a "small" (= "obsolete") drive sitting around and be willing to sell cheap. Look at the price of the new 40-60 GB ones, and work out the price/megabyte. That should give a fairly good price for discussion. :D | Graham L (2) | ||
| 160507 | 2003-07-17 07:03:00 | Umm robo you got a little mixed up. Win 98 is not limited to partition size but Fat32 is restricted to a 4GB FILESIZE, i've had a 60GB partition for 98 :D I couldn't find exactly what HD size it can go upto, but it should be easy to get a smallish 10GB HD second hand. |
Patryn999 (3748) | ||
| 160508 | 2003-07-17 07:08:00 | I don't think that you current motherboard will be able to use anything greater than an 8 gig drive (but I could be wrong, without actually checking the board out I am not 100% sure). However if that is the case then you might be lucky if there is a Bios Update out for your board that will allow it to use larger capacity drives or or could use some drive Overlay software. Go to your boards manufacturer websit and see if they have a bios update there for it and see what it does. If I get time later I might go check it out and post the results. |
Odin (227) | ||
| 160509 | 2003-07-17 07:11:00 | Dont forget also that you can get HDD manufacturers' dynamic overlay software, or an ATA 100 controller PCI card with its own BIOS that will overcome size limitations. | Terry Porritt (14) | ||
| 160510 | 2003-07-17 07:23:00 | Thanks for all your help. Much appreciated. As a cheeky question, are bios upgrades free of charge because I went to the Award site and it appears as though there is a cost involved utilising that site. I was wondering if maybe there was an alternative site available. | Smurf (506) | ||
| 160511 | 2003-07-17 07:32:00 | You should only get the Bios updtae from your Motherboard manufactures site and NOT the Bios manufacture site like award. Award Bios do charge and does AMI ect but only because they supply to the Board manufactures who then fiddle with the Bios to make it work for their configuration. Bios updates are free from your board manufacturer (at least I haven't heard of any that do charge, but that don't mean they don't exist) However ordering a new BIOS CHIP cos you corrupted the current one trying to update it does cost :D Be very careful about updating the Bios and one wrong move and the bunny dies :D |
Odin (227) | ||
| 160512 | 2003-07-17 08:48:00 | A real advantage of getting an ATA/DMA 100 IDE controller card is that as well as supporting large drives, it will give your computer a good speed boost, Dick Smith have them reduced to clear at $68 catalogue no. XH6692. It is much safer than trying to do a BIOS upgrade on an old computer, and anyway your computer will most probably only support PIO 4 mode, which is slow. If you get another computer without DMA 100, say it only has DMA33, then the card can be moved over and nothing is lost. |
Terry Porritt (14) | ||
| 160513 | 2003-07-17 20:47:00 | Sounds like a plan to me. | robo (205) | ||
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