Bios not reqognizing large drive

[minuteman263]

I have a laptop that the manufacturer claims the bios won't recognize a hard drive larger that 40 gig. I would like to put a 120 gig drive in there. if I partition the drive into 3 40 gig partitions, will the bios recognize the bootable partition and just "think" that it is 40 gig.

 

[vacunita]

Actually No. The Hardware will still be of the original size, and the BIOS doesn't really look into Partitions.

There used to be and old piece of software, that would make the Bios recognize the full size of it. I used it a long time ago on a Compaq Desktop where i replaced its factory 2Gb drive with a new 20Gb drive, and had to use the software for its proper functioning. However, the name escapes me at the moment.


But depending on the OS, it might recognize the full drive without it and even though the BIOS doesn't.

WhatOS were you planning on installing on it???





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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[wahnula]

Hmmm...what is the make and model of the laptop? There is a similar problem here: thread751-1361560

Dumb question #1: Have you searched for an updated BIOS?

 

[minuteman263]

The laptop is an ibuddie xp a929. Made by Elite Group.
It came with Win XP Pro which is still on there. It came with a 10 gig HD that croaked about 3 years ago. I put in a 40 gig that works fine. I wanted to put a much bigger drive because I use it as my back-up DJ machine, so I have a large amount of MP3's.
I did see that there is a bios flash upgrade for it, but I am a little gun shy about trying that because I could easily junk out the bios if it doesn't go right.

 

[mainegeek]

minuteman263,

The software that Vacunita was refering to is called a Drive Overlay and they can be problems within them self.


Maybe get another drive and put it in a USB enclosure.

 

[minuteman263]

I have been doing the USB drive thing, so I guess I'll just continue with that. Thanks for the responses.