Can I use 160G HD for my 450M PII PC?

[Rudrow]

Hi all. I bought a 160G HD from staples today. My pc is very old. it's a 450M PII. Can I use the new HD on my old pc?
Thanks.

 

[RichieZ]

i think you can use it up to 127GB, u need a new controller card to handle >127GB

 

[Rudrow]

I don't know much about computer. How do I set the new controller or do i need to buy a new controller card?

 

[Shooters]

You need to have WinXP SP1 installed (or Win2k SP3 with a slight registry modification) and a BIOS that supports 48-bit logical block addressing (LBA) which yours probably doesn't since it's an old motherboard. You could always check the manufacturers website though. I know that a lot of newer controller cards support 48-bit LBA, but I'm not sure if you still need to meet the OS requirements for that case. If you don't want to have to buy new stuff then you can always just partition the hard drive to make full use of its capacity. Otherwise, you'll be limited to 137GB.