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New HDs backwards compatible?

W

weshuang

Senior member
I have an old-ish system with an Abit BH6 mobo, which is a Pentium II or III compatible. I want to upgrade to XP and buy a new HD, format it as NTFS and put XP on it.

The new HDs have specs with which I'm unfamiliar, like Ultra ATA, Fast ATA, etc. Does anyone know whether I'll have any problem using one of these hard drives with my mobo?

Thanks,
Wes
 
The only thing to watch out for is the gigantic disks. The BH6 doesn't appear to have a bios that supports 48-bit LBA. That means that you won't be able to install a disk with more than 137GB capacity. Probably not a big issue.

FAQ sheet

Edit: Abit has only officially tested their bios for the BH6 to support 40GB disks, but acknowledges that it will likely work with bigger disks.
 
Wow, thanks guys, especially Kgraeme.

I think what I'll do is buy the 80 gb hd I've been meaning to buy to double the capacity in my Ultimate TV, and take the 40 gb out and put it in my PC. Thanks!
 
I forget if the BH6 is ATA/33 or ATA/66.

If it is only ATA/33 you might want to invest in a ATA/66/100/133 PCI card.

most modern drives (if not all) will exceed the ~30MB/s bandwidth limit on ATA/33.

I use an old maxtor 13gb 7200 and it does ~25MB/s last time I checked, so I would venture to say the 40gb drive would even exaust the bandwidth of ATA/33.

good luck 🙂
 
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