120gigs Hard drive and MOBO asus p2-99

[Dan62]

Hi,

A friend of mine bought a Maxtor 120gig ata-133 HD to put in is old PC. The machine have a P2-99 MOBO and a 8gig HD.

I'm trying to get the bios recognize the new HD 120 gig but it is not possible. I've flash the bios to the latest version offered by Asus on their web site, no change.

My question is , is it possible to install such a big HD in an old machine, Does the ATA-133 can be run on a MOBO that usually handle a at-33 0r at-66 hardrive.

A fast response from someone will be greatly appreciated,

Daniel
dlarocque@moncanoe.com

 

[mainegeek]

Dan62,
Check the drive and make sure that it is jumpered correctly.
Did the bios update mention larger drive support?
You could use a pci ata adapter card as well.

 

[micker377]

What OS? If 95 - give up! If 98, I'd put in an PCI IDE board (no BIOS size to worry about - it has it's own BIOS). Partition three 40 gig partitions (or four 30gig partitions) (with fdisk), and have fun. Stay away from "over-lays", it will screw up the hard drive for future use. Do it right, and you can use the hard drive as-is when you upgrade the computer.

 

[RICHINMINN]

The P2-99 MB can handle only ATA-33 speeds. If it can recognize the drive, it can read from it and write to it without any problem, other than the fact that it will be able to do only at ATA-33 speeds, which is 1/4 of the speed that the new drive is capable of. But it should be at least as fast as the 8-GB drive that was/still is in the system.

The easiest thing to do would probably be to install a separate PCI IDE controller card in the system, as micker377 suggested. Then you've got the option of keeping the old drive as the bootable drive, and use the new one to hold the applications and data, or remove the old drive completely and disable the onboard IDE controller within the system BIOS. A separate IDE controller can usually be configured to allow booting from the primary master device attached to it.

Rich (in Minn.)

 

[garebo]

I agree with all of the above. However, there is one more low-cost option. YOu can get on many forums such as tech imo and anandtech, they have trading sections. There you could buy a better motherboard that WILL handle the hard drive without you having to get a pci card to do the job. And, if you get the right mobo, you can still use the same ram and all the other parts you have, just change the mobo, and the cost would be the same or less than buying a new pci card!! Cool, eh?
One more thing, if you get on those forums, you could buy that pci card for as low as $10 and on an online store like newegg or one like it, the price for the card would be about $30 to $40. Actually, i have such a card that i would sell you.
You can contact me at kron123 (at) cogeco (dot) ca if you want to, or go on the other forums and get your goodies.





Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[micker377]

My favorite "transition" motherboard, is the VA 503+. It takes either power supply, many CPU's, and both SIMM and DRAM memory sticks.

 

[Dan62]

HI,

I would like to thank you all for your suugestions. After emailing the Asus support desk regarding my problem, they sent me a new bios update, that was not avalialble on their web site ??? I 'flashed the bios and it was able to see the 120 gigs drive. I've formated the drive into 3 partitions, 40gigs each. After that everything went perfectly. I was aware that i could not get the full speed of this drive but my friend use the PC mostly for email and word prossessing. I've also added a 256 megs sdram to help the pc run a little bit faster on win XP.

In conclusion everybody is happy with the result

Thanks again

Daniel

 

[garebo]

Way to go!! Good thinking to contact mfgr!!
You took the steps a good geek would!


Good advice + great people = tek-tips