Will the 32GB BIOS limitation affect me?

[FishTankX]

I'm possibly putting an 80 gig drive on an old BX motherboard, the Gainward 6IBA and i'm wondering if i'll be struck by some sort of BIOS limitation or something.

 

[AndyHui]

Upgrade your board to the latest BIOS. Most BIOSes after 1999 should support drives up to 128GB.

 

[WarCon]

AndyHui, one quick question. What decides whether your bios limitation will be 128gig or 137gig? I have heard of both and was wondering how 137gig would fit into normal binary conventions.

...................edit..................
I just did the math and 137gig is the binary limit, so where does 128gig (or is it simply the numbering convention) limit come from?

 

[Pariah]

128GiB (binary) or 137GB (decimal). Same number.

 

[WarCon]

So its really a 1111111111111111111111111111111111111 (37 1's) byte drive access issue in binary......😀


............edit..........
Or is that 1000000000000000000000000000000000000 byte drive access issue?

 

[Pariah]

I don't really get what you are talking about, but the ATA interface uses 28bits to number 512 byte sectors on the hard drive, which is how the 128GiB limit is derived. 268,435,456 sectors containing 512bytes a piece.

 

[WarCon]

Was actually just trying to write the number 137gig in binary as a brief venture in humor. See my sig, I guess I am still working on it........🙂

................edit................
But thanks for the info.