Change HD Size

[HumanSpyder]

My motherboard, I believe, only supports SATA harddrives up to 250 GB in size and at a transfer rate of 150 MB/s.
However, I just bought a new 300 GB SATA harddrive (Maxtor brand).
Is it possible to edit the bios or a setting in windows so that my new HD looks like it is only 250 GB instead of the full 300?

 

[PurdueRy]

...what motherboard with SATA has a restriction on hard drive size??

I think you're just crazy

 

[nadirshakur]

Originally posted by: PurdueRy
...what motherboard with SATA has a restriction on hard drive size??

I think you're just crazy

^

PICNIC

 

[jackschmittusa]

What could possibly make you think that there is a 250gb limit?

 

[corkyg]

If you really insist on doing it, yes, it can be done. Use a good partition manager and create a 50 MB partition and then make it hidden. The drive will then appear as 250 GB.

But - like has been said, why? Why not just try it as a 300 gigger and if it doesn't work, post a question or statement.

 

[HumanSpyder]

ummm

I posted a Topic earlier titled "HD Not Recognized"
I'll repost what I said below:

"Hello. I have a computer running XP S2 with a Gigabyte nForce3 motherboard and AMD 64 3000. My bootdisk is a Western Digital 160GB SATA (Caviar I think).
I tried to install a Maxtor 300GB (16mb cache) SATA drive. I tried to initialize it with Disk Management but that got an error after which the drive (Drive 1) stopped showing up on the Disk Management. So I used MaxBlast 4 which was bundled with the drive. After that the drive showed up in Device Manager but not in Disk Management or My Computer. It also causes my CPU to run at close to 100% for some reason. My computer works fine with the drive removed.
After playing around and not being able to get it to work I exchanged it for another new one of the same model. I tried initializing and partitioning with MaxBlast again but got the same problem. Using the Hard Disk Info tool in MaxBlast, I noticed that there are no partitions listed on that drive even though I specificially formatted the disk as one 300 GB partition using MaxBlast.

Can anyone tell me what the problem is? Any help would be appreciated. "

"I was looking at my mobo manual and found this:

"nVIDIA® nForce3 250Gb/250 Ultra (SATA0_SB,
SATA1_SB)"
"Supports data transfer rate of up to 150 MB/s"

Im not sure if the 250 is a size limit or what. But I know one problem is that I have to change the jumper to 150 mb/s instead of 300."

 

[HumanSpyder]

btw I couldnt get the Harddrive to work even after changing the jumper to reduce the SATA speed.

So I shoved the thing into an external enclosure (usb 2.0) and it is working fine that way.

but I'd still like to hear any solutions to the original problem. Thnx.

 

[nadirshakur]

Motherboard model?

 

[HumanSpyder]

Mobo is a Gigabyte GA-K8NSC-939
It's part of the K8 Triton series.
Socket 939 for Athlon 64.
nForce 3 chipset.

This is fairly mid to low end stuff so I wouldn't be surprised if there were limitations all over the place.

 

[jackschmittusa]

It is not a size limitation of the mb. A little hard to follow some of what you are saying because you seem to use "partition" and "format" interchangably. They are not the same process.

 

[nadirshakur]

check page 32 on ur manual. there was also a conflict in the maxtor firmware although it was for the 6v series http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Support/Moth...&ProductID=1881&ClassValue=Motherboard
make sure ur chipset and bios is all new from this same page. although i still think PICNIC