Hard Drive Upgrade Advice

[TimboA]

I'm looking at upgrading my Compaq Presario 5170's harddrive. I currently have a 6Gb disk, but am looking at putting in a Maxtor Diamondmax D740 40gb. The problem I have is that I'm not sure whether my PC is compatible - I've read that it has to be Ultra DMA compliant ??

Can Anyone assist/enlighten me ?

 

[osuman]

This drive is definitely Ultra DMA compatible. In fact, in today's market it would be unlikely to find a new IDE drive that isn't UDMA compatible. Most likely this drive supports a higher DMA level than your motherboard, which won't cause any problems. Furthermore, even if it weren't UDMA then it would still work but not to the full performance potential of the motherboard. However, most likely the case is reversed for you, your motherboard will not allow the drive to work to it's full potential.

The only problem you could possibly run into is a BIOS limititation for the size of the drive. If you plug it in and the bios doesn't recognize it for it's full size you will have to flash it. That's something you won't really know until you get it however and it's that big of a problem.

Good luck.

 

[TimboA]

osuman,

Thanks for your reply. What I was really after (and didn't make it that clear !!) was info on my 5170, and whether it was Ultra DMA compliant - I'm not too up on these things, has Ultra DMA been around for a while (my 5170 is about 3yrs old...)

Thanks again.

 

[osuman]

Sorry, I guess I should have read your post more carefully.

If it's three years old then it's questionable if it uses Ultra DMA. The best thing to do would be to contact Compaq and/or go to their website to see if you can dig up any specs on your system. But again, the drive should still work even if the mobo doesn't use UDMA. The only down side would be that your aren't able to use the full speed of your new drive. In which case, you may want to buy one with a slower interface as it's likely to be cheaper and still run just as fast on your system.
Hope this helps.

 

[dakota81]

Being a 3-year old Compaq, I would recommend you to get a 30gig harddrive instead of a 40gig harddrive. Just as there was the limitation of ide drives at around 540meg (i forget what the exact size limitation was) several years ago, there is another limitation on ide drives at 32gig. It's not something to worry about with a brand new system, but for your case I don't think it's worth chancing.

Don't worry about compatibility issues on other factors such as udma. The beauty of the ide interface is all motherboards are backwards compatible so they will work with all older harddrives. And in reverse, all harddrives today will work in older motherboards - provided they are not too large in size.

 

[fenix]

the K6-II compaq 5441 that I use has an 8G HD and I have been told that all that it will support for a second HD is a 12 G HD. I asked if I could flash the BIOS to change this and was told that there is not a BIOS upgrade available at this time. So before wasting time buying and returning, find out what the largest size HD your BIOS supports and if there is an update available to increase it if it's small.

 

[TimboA]

Thanks for the assistance with the Ultra DMA issue, and I'm glad I posed the question on this forum as I never knew the BIOS might have a bearing on my choice of Hard Drive upgrade.

Fenix, from your reply sounds it like you are intending to have 2 x hard drives in your machine (the original 6gb jobbie and another 12gb). I'm hoping to replace the original 6Gb with a 40gb (probably now a 30 or even a 20 based on the advice of dakota81). Do you know if the BIOS issue was just for a 2nd hard Drive or was it for a replacement single drive too ?? Also, I've had a look around for some info on Compaq BIOS's but can't find a stitch - any ideas where I might try looking ??

Thanks.