How do I know what the largest harddisk I can use?

[Rhonda85]

I have been kind of out of the PC loop over that past couple years and I know in the past certain BIOS would only acknowledge a hard drive only so big, I am not sure if this is still a problem. I have a Compaq Presario PC. It has an athlon xp2800 w/VIA KM400 chipset and currently has a Seagate ATA100 120GB hard disk. I would like to put a SATA 640 GB hard disk in but not sure if one that size will work. How can I find out the max size I can use on this system?

 

[jaqie]

It's not BIOS limited anymore. The recent OS releases (all linucies I know of, win2k and newer, et al) all do in-OS drive translation...even if your BIOS does not recognize the HDD at full capacity. The only real possible problem here with size is with windows. XP prior to SP2 did not properly recognize partitions over 127GB. So in short, if you use linux or use XP SP2 or newer, you can access and use even the brand new 1TB drives.

The interface is another story. While SATA1 controllers work fine with SATA2 drives, your system may not have SATA at all, if so, you will need a SATA controller, I would recommend buying a 2 port SATA2 controller since they are quite inexpensive.

 

[TemjinGold]

Given that it's a brand name PC that old, I seriously doubt it has SATA.

 

[jaqie]

...which is why I said what I did in the second paragraph

 

[RebateMonger]

Check HP/Compaq's Support site for BIOS upgrades. You didn't list the year or model number. There are many "Compaq Presarios". There have been several disk size limitations in BIOSes, but most were from before the year 2000. And adding a SATA controller would make any BIOS limitation go away, anyway.

 

[jaqie]

I have never seen a BIOS update that allows for larger hard drive capacities in a big-brand system... they tend to want you to purchase a whole new computer... but as I said that is basically a moot point with xp sp2 (or newer) or linux.
The worst that Ive ever seen happen is that the system thinks the drive is a smaller one then it is, and either have to run software DDO (google it) or just use the drive as if it was a smaller one.

RebateMonger:48 bit addressing is much newer then 2000 and is what gets us over the 127GB limit, IIRC.

 

[Rhonda85]

The motherboard is an ASUS A7V8X-LA. It does have two SATA ports.

Thanks!

 

[RebateMonger]

n.m.