What's the largest hard drive a Pentium 3 (socket 370) can support?

[Paktu]

I have an old Dell L667r that I want to use as a basic PC, mostly for playing music. It does not currently have a hard drive, but I tried using a 120 GB drive I had and it won't recognize it. I'm guessing that's because it's too large, so what the most that this computer can support?

 

[SparkyJJO]

I believe that 32 GB was one of the limitations originally, then the next was 137GB. If you can't put a 120GB drive in there then odds are it has the 32GB barrier.

You could have a small OS drive to boot from and then a PCI controller card to run your large drive. Those controller cards can be had from newegg for cheap.

 

[stevolution]

It depends on the file system not the chipset.. so if you format your harddrive as NTFS not FAT32 should be ok whether you have old chipset or newest chipset.

If the harddrive is not recognised, then either jumper setting is wrong, there is something wrong with the cable or the harddrive is damaged. Could be something else but thats what I came up with as soon as I read your post.

Laters

 

[Trashman]

I guess alot depends on what won't recognize it? windows or bios.
doing a quick search, i would assume that the motherboard uses the intel 810 chipset.
i thought the 32gb limitation was a fat 16 limitation, could be wrong, just going off the top of my head...bios should still detect drive....if bios is not then your jumpers are wrong...check jumpers 1st to make sure.

yeah, what he said...took to long to type

 

[SparkyJJO]

I was just going by those sizes because I ran an older P3 system that the BIOS would hang when trying to detect the drive unless I jumpered the drive to limit it to 32GB. It was a BIOS limitation.

 

[stevolution]

Originally posted by: Trashman
I guess alot depends on what won't recognize it? windows or bios.
doing a quick search, i would assume that the motherboard uses the intel 810 chipset.
i thought the 32gb limitation was a fat 16 limitation, could be wrong, just going off the top of my head...bios should still detect drive....if bios is not then your jumpers are wrong...check jumpers 1st to make sure.

yeah, what he said...took to long to type

FAT16 is even worse... 2GB but back in the days where harddrive space from 250MB to 850MB was big enough FAT16 was fine

 

[Lucu]

I have a P3 socket 370 and it has one 120 and a 250 gb disk installed and running fine with windows xp.

 

[JBird7986]

Originally posted by: stevolution

Originally posted by: Trashman
I guess alot depends on what won't recognize it? windows or bios.
doing a quick search, i would assume that the motherboard uses the intel 810 chipset.
i thought the 32gb limitation was a fat 16 limitation, could be wrong, just going off the top of my head...bios should still detect drive....if bios is not then your jumpers are wrong...check jumpers 1st to make sure.

yeah, what he said...took to long to type

FAT16 is even worse... 2GB but back in the days where harddrive space from 250MB to 850MB was big enough FAT16 was fine

I still remember the day back in 1994 when my Dad brought home our first family computer that blew away my Grandfather's PC-XT: 100 MHz Pentium, 16MB RAM, 4x CD-ROM and a whopping 1.2GB HDD...the salesman told my Dad that my family"could run a small country" from that computer at the time. Now I've got a 1GB jump drive sitting in my desk like it's nothing.

 

[0roo0roo]

bios and if theres still trouble sometimes the software that comes with the drive can get around it.
something like this http://www.48bitlba.com/win98.htm

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
bios and if theres still trouble sometimes the software that comes with the drive can get around it.
something like this http://www.48bitlba.com/win98.htm

yep, or you can just toss a $5 PCI ATA 100> controller card in it.

 

[ForumMaster]

probably a bios limitation. you need a PCI controller that supports 48-Bit LBA. there's also probablly a jumper setting that allows the BIOS to recognize the drive.

 

[q2261]

flash your bios to latest version, use ntfs, make sure your jumpers are correct - don't use cs, set it to master, i'm running 2x200gig drives on an old dell xpsr400 pentium2, works fine.

 

[oynaz]

Do what 0roo 0roo said. This will 95% sure solve your problems.

 

[Paktu]

Thanks for the replies. The problem is that it won't recognize the drive even in BIOS. I know the drive itself is fine since I use it as the hard drive in my Playstation 2 and also tested it in my main PC.

 

[oynaz]

Have you tried what 0roo 0roo said?