You do not need ata133 to see higher then 137gb

[RobCur]

I believe it was just the limitation of WindowsXP prior to SP1, have an ata66 mobo and 160gb works just fine.

 

[Chaotic42]

IIRC, you need a controller that supports 48-bit logical block addressing.

 

[RobCur]

That's really weird, my bios does show 137gb but i can format it as 160gb using pm8
Even XP allows me to do so, saying 152gb lol

 

[ssanches]

Originally posted by: RobCur
I believe it was just the limitation of WindowsXP prior to SP1, have an ata66 mobo and 160gb works just fine.

Umm..although you need WinXP SP1, the motherboard's bios should support 48bit LBA...you'd probably need a bios upgrade if it doesn't. ATA-133 isn't necessary for HDD's higher than 137GB. It's release just happened to coincide with the need for 48bit LBA for HDD's greater than 137GB

 

[Shooters]

You do not need ata133 to see higher then 137gb

Who ever said you did?

That's really weird, my bios does show 137gb but i can format it as 160gb using pm8
Even XP allows me to do so, saying 152gb lol

Although BIOS flashes that enable 48-bit LBA are recommended, they're not always necessary. Some hard drives larger than 137GB have code programmed into them that allows a 48-bit LBA capable operating system and other programs to recognize their full capacity even when the BIOS doesn't.

 

[ScrapSilicon]

Originally posted by: Shooters

You do not need ata133 to see higher then 137gb

Who ever said you did?

That's really weird, my bios does show 137gb but i can format it as 160gb using pm8
Even XP allows me to do so, saying 152gb lol

Although BIOS flashes that enable 48-bit LBA are recommended, they're not always necessary. Some hard drives larger than 137GB have code programmed into them that allows a 48-bit LBA capable operating system and other programs to recognize their full capacity even when the BIOS doesn't.

bingo

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: ScrapSilicon

Originally posted by: Shooters

You do not need ata133 to see higher then 137gb

Who ever said you did?

That's really weird, my bios does show 137gb but i can format it as 160gb using pm8
Even XP allows me to do so, saying 152gb lol

Although BIOS flashes that enable 48-bit LBA are recommended, they're not always necessary. Some hard drives larger than 137GB have code programmed into them that allows a 48-bit LBA capable operating system and other programs to recognize their full capacity even when the BIOS doesn't.

bingo

Huh? You guys are just a teensy-tiny bit off there.

It's not code stored in the HD, but rather, the code executing on the host system, that has to support the 48-bit LBA protocol over the IDE bus. The HDs themselves have different hardware/firmware that allows treating the appropriate "IBM taskfile registers" as twice their size, by writing to them twice, and having a pair of "ping-pong" physical registers behind the original singular hardware registers.

The BIOS is only necessary for BIOS/DOS things, Windows NT-based and *nix-based OSes have their own protected-mode IDE drivers, that merely have to be upgraded to support the 48-bit LBA protocol as well.

You can get away with not needing a 48-bit LBA BIOS, if your boot partition is below the 128 GiB boundry, and the OS in question's native drivers will then support the full capacity after the OS boots.