How big a HDD can I put in this machine ?

[ribbony]

I thought adding a bigger HDD would be simple but I have encountered a wide range of contradictions from the various shops I have asked. Here is the scenario.

I have a Pentium 2, 233, with a 5gb drive running Windows 98. I have a slide scanner that is going to produce lots of 15mb files and the old HDD is going to burst with that input.

The stores I asked about putting in a bigger drive have said:
"It will not take anything bigger than 8 gig".
"It will not take anything bigger than 32 gig".
"It will take bigger drives but not read anything beyond 8 gig".
"It will read anything up to 40gig", etc, etc.

So you can see why I am confused.

The Pentium 2 motherboard is a Tekram P6L40-A4 (X), It has an updated BIOS: Award 4.51 PG 10/29/97.
It has an Intel P2 processor, 192 mb ram.

I do not want to buy another HDD until I know that it will work, as I live remote and have to get the HDD by mail.

It has been suggested to put in an additional card in a PCI slot to allow the BIOS to read a bigger drive!

What do you think ?

PS: I tried to post an earlier version in another category but I can not find the thread to check if anyone answered it as when I posted it there was no "subscribe to this thread" option. Mystrey as to where it went. Perhaps it never got posted.


Thanks

 

[MWink]

"It will take bigger drives but not read anything beyond 8 gig".

That sounds the most probable. It really depends on if the BIOS is new enough to overcome the 8GB limit.

 

[Lvis]

I know it will take more than an eight gig.. How much more, I don't know. Getting a controller card is a good idea, it would enable you to take advantage of the speed of the newer hard drives. Maxtor sometimes sells harddrives with a card in the box too. I have one (60 gig) and it works well. Faster than the two 8.4's I had in this box before.

 

[ribbony]

I would be happy with a 20 or 40 gig HDD if it would work.

Would flashing the BIOS enable me to do that ? If so, how would I go about doing it ?

Thanks

 

[redhatlinux]

I think that you should go with a PCI controller card. If you can find a BIOS that supports the larger size, your chipset will still limit the speed (probably ATA33). The add-in card will support larger sizes and provide ATA100 support.

 

[WW]

here's your other thread

see the answers there (especially mine )

you can use the 'search' function on top ('customize' 'profile' 'search' ........) to find older threads


also, sounds like you are doing some high power stuff there (scanning and editing large images). I don't think you'll be happy with a 233mHz pentium no matter how large a hard drive you get. It might be a good time to upgrade the motherboard/cpu/memory too. But you can always get the hard drive and see.

Check out storage review for the fastest hard drives available. Probably the Western Digitals with the 8mb cache.

good luck with the upgrade

 

[nightowl]

I would say that a 20 - 30 GB drive would work in your old P2 without a problem. I had a Pentium 233MMX running with a 20 GB dirve and it recognized the drive right away. I did not have to install any of the overlay programs to recognize the full size of the drive. My guess is that you will hit the 32GB barrier though.

 

[ribbony]

 

[ribbony]

Thanks everyone for the advice. How I have some homework to do !