Can older motherboards read newer hardrives?

[beansbaxter]

I know there are limitations for older machines, in regards to them only being able to read so much when it comes to hard drives capacity. But is there a way around this?

The computer is a Compaq Prosignia Desktop, Pentium2-400Mhz, 256Mb PC100 RAM, standard setup from those days.

The drive I'm trying to get to work is a Western Digital 120Mb 7200RMP 8Mb IDE hardrive.

The motherboard reads the hardrive, but it only sees it as a 56Gb hardrive. That is less than half, so if anyone knows a trick or workaround to get this to work, please enlighten me. Thanks.

 

[eydolic]

You can run a hard-disk overlay for the OS or you can possibly find a bios flash that enables the extra disk support.

 

[beansbaxter]

I thought about their being a BIOS update, especially since it is on the business side. But for the life of me, I cant find a model number anywhere on the chassis to determine which Prosignia line it is and compare it to one listed on HP's website.

Please tell me more about this hard-disk overlay for the OS?

I want there to be only one hardrive in this machine, so its going to be from a DOS standpoint so I can partition it, etc. before I throw any OS on it. Is there something I can do at this level, and then ensure I can see the complete hardrive at all levels of the OS?

For reference, this machine is going to be running LILO for the boot loader, and 3 operating systems will be installed. Windows 9x, XP Server 2003 Enterprise, and Linux (Suse distro). Any problems you can forsee?

I would like to just be able to do something at the DOS level to "see" the entire capacity of the hardrive, and then just go about installing everything, etc.

 

[eydolic]

The overlay kinda depends. What size partitions are you wanting for all of the operating systems?

 

[eydolic]

http://www.samsung.com/Product...rdDiskDrive/utilities/

 

[bim27142]

upgrade men?! 🙂

well anyway, try to upgrade BIOS... that usually helps because i had one old school mobo(with celeron 450Mhz), updated the BIOS and it detected an 80GB hard drive from 30GB++ initial detection... if it doesn't help, then maybe think of getting a new system instead...

 

[Trashman]

Ya need to get one of these.............LINK.
That will solve your problems.

 

[beansbaxter]

I know I could upgrade or buy additional parts. This is a machine I am building using additional parts, and it's on a very tight budget. I need to get it up and running by the end of the weekend so there are some time constraints as well.

As for partition sizes, I'd like to give about 8gb to Linux, 8Gb to Windows 9x, 16Gb to Windows 03, and split the rest up into two or three rather large partitions for data storage only.

The more I read about overlay, the more it addresses barriers of 32gb. Any reason why my machine can see 56? Seems like an oddball number...

 

[eydolic]

There are many different barriers depending on manufacter and chipset. 6Gb, 10Gb, 14Gb, 32Gb, 52Gb, 64GB, on up. The 32Gb is one of the more "common" barriers.

There is no reason to do an overlay if you are going to partition it that way.

 

[beansbaxter]

Originally posted by: eydolicThere is no reason to do an overlay if you are going to partition it that way.

As I am messing around with various overlay utilities, I am discovering the same thing. So do you know this...

Even though the BIOS and the DOS command line cannot read the entire capacity of the hardrive, will the operating systems be able to read the entire hardrive during the part of the install that pertains to partition management?

I guess I was under the impression that software OS limitations were also in fact limited to the hardware's limitations, but I think this is providing to be a false notion.

 

[eydolic]

Once you put one partition of maximum size on there, it will normally make the rest of the drive look like an unformatted drive.

So, at first you see:
52GB drive, unformatted.
52GB fat32, 52GB drive, unformatted
52GB fat32, 52GB fat32, 52G drive, unformatted

And so on. Really, depends on the BIOS.