What minimums needed for larger harddrives....?

[awizardalso]

Can someone give me an idea of the minimum requirement for the BIOS and/or processor to use larger hard drives without EZBIOS? I have a 233 Pentium on an unknown motherboard. I've been using a 3.2 Gb hard drive for the OS and programs, and a 9.5 Gb for all the data type files (graphics and music). I couldn't get the 9.5Gb to work, and I had it installed by someone else who used EZBIOS. Now I can't use Norton's Rescue Disk and some other utilities. If I remember correctly, I had no trouble reformatting and installing Windows on the 3Gb and I was able to install it myself with little difficulty.
Is there a minimum requirement I should look for in selecting my next motherboard/processor to get anything close to plug and play HD's, well at least eliminate the need to use EZBIOS with a 10 or 20Gb HD? Windows has found a 280gr 45ACP bullet in your
hard drive, and will now install drivers
for it.

[OK] [Cancel]

 

[Snickle]

"Windows has found a 280gr 45ACP bullet in your
hard drive, and will now install drivers
for it."

I preferred the 240gr. hollow point myself.

Don't be too concerned about the hard drive size, most all computers/motherboards/BIOSes now being sold will support 20, 30, 40, 80GB drives. Haven't worked with larger yet.

Earlier BIOSes had problems at about 4GB and 8GB. Win95/95A can't use more than 2GB partitions. WinNT/2000/XP has problems with drive overlays.

What the overlay did was lie to the BIOS and make it think all was kosher. Worked good until the overlay got corrupted and all was lost. Just like with a compressed drive, lose 1 bit or byte from the large file holding everything and all is lost.

 

[awizardalso]

I was living on the cutting edge of discarded components, and now these are outdated. I have 233MHz Pentium, 160M ram and 3.2 and 9.5G HD's, all scavenged from used machines. I've bought all the cheap accessories, but the machine itself is (was) pretty much pieced together. I have access to a ATX mb with a 450 MHz processor. That's pretty much all I know about it. I just don't want to go thru all the hassle of swapping everything if I can't install everything myself. I don't know what the **** I do this thing, but I find myself doing the 'format C:' thing alot, and reinstalling everything to straighten out some malfunction. The EZBIOS utility just makes it more difficult to fix, and want to avoid it. I suppose the answer to my original questsion has more questions first.
Thanks for the response. I'll try to get more information about the board and BIOS, and see if I can't look up some specs or something first. Thanks again. Windows has found a 280gr 45ACP bullet in your
hard drive, and will now install drivers
for it.

[OK] [Cancel]

 

[wolluf]

There have been various 'blocks' on bioses recognising 'large' hard drives - eg, 528MB, 2GB, 8GB, 32GB. Your 450mhz processor & motherboard is almost certainly good for up to 32GB (and possibly bigger) without hardware utility (eg EZBIOS) support (most bioses dated from end of 1997 can support > 8GB drives). To check, just connect the 9.5GB drive to it and see if the bios recognises the whole drive (not just c. 8GB).

PS You don't say which version of windows - but from description sounds like 9x/ME. If it is, have you access to NT or 2K - they'd run much more reliably.