23 Nov
2006
23 Nov
'06
1:33 p.m.
On 11/23/06, Tothwolf <tothwolf at concentric.net> wrote:
If memory serves, the magic numbers were actually
527MB and 8GB. A 20GB
drive could still be used as an 8GB drive though.
You beat me to that answer... check your drive jumper options... many
(most? all?) modern large drives have a setting that limits the
reported (and usable!) capacity to 8GB.
Fortunately, I've never had to fiddle with that one - I've always
either had a new enough motherboard to handle the drives I've thrown
at it (I _do_ have a stock of smallish drives around for older
machines), or I've used the Drive Overlay Manager (or equivalent)
software, that adds a bit of a secondary boot/drive overlay to fiddle
the numbers to keep the BIOS happy.
Of course, as others have pointed out, one can get an ISA or PCI IDE
interface, typically ATA100 or ATA133, that includes onboard BIOS
extensions, or just a BIOS-extension-only card - just some way to
trick out the BIOS and get around its limitations.
-ethan