a 160g or 200g hard drive needs a controller to support, is this true for all motherboard?

[dhan]

I am wondering if I buy a big IDE hard drive, such like a 160g or 200g, do I need additional controller card to support it? Any motherboard can support the big HD without the controller card? Thanks.

 

[southnjess]

I think that if you MB has the bios which supports it and the Os you use supports it you should be ok.

Windows XP Pro allows a maximum of 32 GB volume size for FAT32 logical drives
And I think NTFS allows the full amount.

Someone please correct me if i'm wrong.

 

[Burtie21]

i think you need to have sp1 at least installed to recognize the full size, otherwise i believe it tops out at 127gb

 

[DaveSimmons]

Any new motherboard can support large hard drives with the built-in controller, but you must also have Windows XP with Service pack 1 or 2 installed.

If you just have a plain Windows XP CD (no SP1 or SP2) and need to install Windows to a large drive, search "slipstream" for how to make a new CD.

Old motherboards need a BIOS update or a controller card.