Hard disk and the seven major BIOS limitations (II)

Hard disk and the seven major BIOS limitations

Part II

5- The 32 GB Limitation - June 1999.

This condition is caused by the Award BIOS inability to address HD Drives greater than 32GB. Award has been made aware of this issue and has fixed their "core" BIOS as of 6/99. They are passing this information along to the MotherBoard Manufacturers' using their BIOS. Updates for the BIOS should be available soon from individual MotherBoard Manufacturers' to correct this problem. The following are options to overcome the 32 GB BIOS capacity barriers:

Please contact your Motherboard Manufacturer, not Award, for a BIOS Update.

[1st! Most Motherboard Manufacturers have Free Bios Updates. Take advantage of that feature!]

(Recommended) Purchase a PCI ATA Controller card that will support the capacity of the drive. The two benefits of ATA controller cards are: (1) the ability to support large capacity drives and (2) the ability to support the faster transfer rates of the drive. Maxtor's online store, www.MaxStore.com, has a complete selection of ATA Controller cards that support the full capacity of all Maxtor drives. [Or... www.Promise.com - Get a Promise Parallel ATA Controller Card. Safer and simpler in the long run!]

Or Maxtor's MaxBlast 3 "Set Drive Size" utility. Please reference Answer ID: 1361.

6- The 64 GB Limitation

There is no 64 GB BIOS Capacity Barrier. If you use FDISK to format a drive that is larger than 64 GB, FDISK will report the incorrect disk size. Please refer to Answer ID 775 for a resolution. [Get the fdisk Update - Read: Win9xVer]

7- The 137 GB (128 GB binary) Limitation - October 29, 2001.

Most system BIOS's are limited to 137 GB because it can only support 28 bit Logical Block Addressing (LBA). For a resolution please refer to Answer ID 960.

303013 - How to Enable 48-bit Logical Block Addressing Support for ATAPI Disk Drives in Windows XP: (12/26/2003)

You must have a 48-bit LBA compatible BIOS.

You must have a hard disk that has a capacity that is greater than 137 GB.

You must have Windows XP SP1 installed.

327202 - PRB BIOS May Limit Fdisk.exe When Partitioning Hard Disks Larger Than 128 GB: Update System Bios if possible. "IDE Hard Disk Dives larger than 128 GB use 48-bit logical block addressing (LBA) as defined in the ATA/ATAPI-6 Specification." See also: Win9x Versions for fdisk Update Info.

Promise's New Ultra133 TX2 Controller Card Supports Maxtor's Fast Drive And Big Drive Technology: (October 29, 2001).

Maxtor Big Drive Enabler: "A one step executable enabling support for drives larger than 137 Gigabytes in Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 and XP Service Pack 1. This utility takes the guess work out of editing the Windows registry. The Big Drive Enabler fixes an Operating System limitation. This utility is needed anytime a Hard Disk Drive larger than 137 GB is connected to the motherboard's ATA bus, regardless of any system BIOS supporting 48-bit LBA."

www.seagate.com - Why can I only see 127 to 137 GBytes of my 160+ GB drive

Quoting: maxtor.custhelp.com - Online Help Answer:

The Windows 137GB (137.4 GB) Capacity Barrier a.k.a. 48-bit Logical Block Addressing (LBA) Support for ATA/ATAPI (IDE) & Serial ATA HD Drives. The 137GB limitation does not affect SCSI Interface HD Drives.

Escrito por Jose Pinto às 17h38  04/04/2007