HDD too big?

[JebusRocks]

Several days ago a friend of mine tried to replace her HDD witha new HDD 200gb in size. Her PC will not accept a HDD this big, can any one explain what is going on here. I understand the basics in that older PC's are configured to only accept HDD's to a certain size but I am not clear as to what is the limitation and how it can be overcome?

Thanks

 

[edfair]

google search for "hard drive limitations".
Several causes, several fixes, and some not fixable.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[Crowley16]

when you say not accept, what actually happens?

does the bios not recognise anything at all or does the drive show up to be smaller than 200 or does windows only show it to have 138gb?

--------------------
Procrastinate Now!

 

[JebusRocks]

Crowley16

I can't tell you for certain, I believe that the BIOS would not recognize it. She has fixed the problem by simply buying a smaller HDD. 200gb was far more than she needed. I posted the question less for solutions to the problem and more for any general comments or experience people may have had with this situation

Thanks for the reply.

 

[mikeloaf]

If it is hardware problems it is usually caused by an out of date bios. If this is the case you can sometimes get a bios update. You have to flash the bios and if you flash it with the wrong one, the odds are the board will never work again!
be careful and enjoy

 

[cdogg]

Common solutions to the problem are all over the net (google as edfair suggested).

Brief examples of how to overcome the problem:

1) Flash your motherboard's BIOS to the latest revision
2) If the PC is running XP, it must have Service Pack 1 or later (For 2000, it must have SP2 or later).
3) If the above doesn't work, another option is to install a PCI IDE card. This bypasses the 24-bit limitation of older IDE controllers going over PCI instead. The downside is that not all PCI cards are compatible with older BIOS's. Plus if you have a lot of PCI devices, beware that they are all sharing the same bus. Nevertheless, this is a cheap option < $40 if bought online.

More info as well at

http://www.48bitlba.com

~cdogg
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