ata133 drive on ata33 controller

[elusivespoon]

I just bought an 80GB ATA 133 HDD from Maxtor [6L080J34] and am trying to get it to work with my old Biostar mobo [M6TBA], which "supports Ultra DMA/33." From what I've read these two things should work together, but as of yet I've had no luck. I've tried both the 40pin and 80pin cables, and I've double checked the orientation of the 80pin cable. The BIOS settings given by Maxtor don't work [CYLS 16383; HDS 16; SECT 63]. Auto-Detect just sits there. If anyone has any ideas I'd appreciate them greatly.

P.S. If you're wondering why I don't just shell out the cash for an ATA 133 controller card and get the extra speed, it's becuase I'm just going to use this drive for data storage, and will eventually transfer it over to a newer system, so I don't need the speed benefits or the negative money flow. That and I need it to work with Debian. Though if you know of a fairly cheap controller [ATA whatever] that will work with Debian, I'd be glad to hear about it.

Thanks

 

[samgau]

Its possible your mobo needs a bios upgrade... last time i flashed my bios... (about 1 yr ago) it sid in the read me that the HD support was bumped up to 60 gb drives.... and I have an Abit board...

I'm currently using the maxtor ata133 card with the maxtor 80 gb hd... bought both of em in the same package...

 

[DrFunkenstein]

I agree...check to see if a BIOS upgrade is in order. I have an older PII system in which the BIOS don't support any disk larger than 8GB....so if you install a 9 gig drive, you get to use 8 gig of it....likewise on a 15 gig drive. Unfortunately, there are no more BIOS upgrades available for my system, but you may get lucky. BTW, PROMISE has an ATA/100 PCI card for about $50 (that's how I work around my BIOS problem...install an PCI ATA adapter)

 

[4824guy]

You can also get over th bios limit problem by installing the Maxtor EZ-Bios software. IT should be on the floppy disk that came with the HD, or you can get it at the Maxtor site.

 

[Pabster]

Your best bet is to find a cheap PCI controller to run it off. You can find TX2's in FS/T for $20-$30 routinely. Maxtor even bundles the controller with many of the Retail Box drives.

 

[bacillus]

also check that the drive doesn't have a capacity limiting jumper in place. if present, will limit the seen capacity of the hdd to 32Gb!

 

[bacillus]

btw elusivespoon, welcome to the forums!