Installing Hard Drives

[ManOfSteel]

Hello everybody,

1. I would like to know if a 40GB HDD can be installed on an Intel Celeron 333 Mhz with 128 MB RAM. This computer already has a small 6.4GB HDD, a floppy reader and CD player.

2. I heard some computers cannot handle large HDDs depending on the CPU speed. I would like to know what is the maximum HDD size I can install on a Pentium 4 running at 2.4 Ghz.
Also, can this P4 computer handle a floppy reader, a CD player, a CD writer and two HDDs (one 40 GB and one 80 GB or more)

Thank you in advance.

[Solar]

1) Yes, definitely (if the connectors fit). Depending on the BIOS of the system, though, you might not get the full size of the hard drive available. (But I don't think that'll be a problem, a Celeron 333 is already quite modern.)

2) CPU speed is, AFAIK, not the point. It's a matter of the BIOS, the hard drive controller, and the interface of the hard drive. A PIV system should handle drives up to 120 GB in any case, and larger ones if the BIOS is halfway up-to-date (the original ATAPI protocoll hit a size barrier around 128GB).

Also, can this P4 computer handle a floppy reader, a CD player, a CD writer and two HDDs (one 40 GB and one 80 GB or more)

Again, not an issue of CPU speed. IDE/ATAPI controllers can handle two chains of two devices each -> 4 devices. The floppy is on a different chain altogether, so CD player / CD writer / 2 HD's is no problem.

Put one HD on each chain, jumpered as "master", and the CD drives as "slave", preferably so that when you're doing CD burning, the data goes from one chain to another - slave drives get overruled when there's access on master drives, so having source HD and target CD-R on one chain can cause problems.

As for the floppy... depending on the mainboard. Newer, "legacy-free" mainboards don't have a floppy controller anymore; but I don't think a somewhat elderly PIV has this problem.

[yayyak]

On Floppy drives: When you have legacy-free systems with no floppy connector, you generally get USB header pins on the motherboard. You can buy 'Media drives' that not only have a floppy drive in them, but also can read CF and SD cards. Sometimes you can buy ones that connect via USB, others do via IDE.

Hope I've helped.

[Candy]

1) Yes, definitely (if the connectors fit). Depending on the BIOS of the system, though, you might not get the full size of the hard drive available. (But I don't think that'll be a problem, a Celeron 333 is already quite modern.)

Don't shout before you think.

I've had a computer (Cyrix M2-233) which could not use a 40GB harddisk, since the BIOS contained an assert || die on hdsize<32GB, even if it was just mentioned. The only way to boot was to connect it and explicitly set that entry to "None". Of course, windows couldn't see the harddisk. Linux could, but I needed a second to boot from.

2) CPU speed is, AFAIK, not the point. It's a matter of the BIOS, the hard drive controller, and the interface of the hard drive. A PIV system should handle drives up to 120 GB in any case, and larger ones if the BIOS is halfway up-to-date (the original ATAPI protocoll hit a size barrier around 128GB).

The ATA protocol hit a barrier. ATAPI doesn't have that barrier, but harddisks don't use ATAPI (at least, non-SATA harddisks do. iirc, sata harddisks don't either but I'm not sure). There was an extension to the ATA protocol introduced by Maxtor that allows more, which is pretty common on new computers. It involves writing two messages, one containing the first 28 bits of the target address and the second containing the next 28 bits.

[ManOfSteel]

Hello and thank you for all your replies.

Depending on the BIOS of the system, though, you might not get the full size of the hard drive available.

What would happen in that case? Would it show an erroneous size in the operating system: 20 GB for example, instead of 40? Or will it show 40 GB but I will be unable to read/write beyond 20 GB?
The Celeron has an "Award ROM PCI/ISA BIOS (2A69KSHC)" from the 1998 if that helps. It also displays the version "4.51 PG" on startup after the POST.

I entered the BIOS setup and found these settings when I selected "USER" instead of "AUTO":

Code: Select all

size: 6506
cyls: 13446
head: 15
precomp: 65535
landz: 13445
sector: 63

I changed the values to "99999" so that it would probably correct it by replacing what I entered and showing the maximum values instead, I got:

Code: Select all

size: 16675
cyls: 34463
head: 15
precomp: 34463
landz: 34463
sector: 63

Does that (size: 16675) mean I will get around 16.6 GB maximum?

I tried another thing. I only changed cylinders to 65535 and the heads to 20 this time and it gave me a size of 42280 which is probably enough for a 40 GB HDD.

What do you think about all this? What are the most plausible and acceptable settings?

[Solar]

Check this thread, which is about a different board but tells you how to handle a 4.51pg BIOS that doesn't detect large HD's correctly.

As for editing the drive settins in the BIOS... if at all possible, let the BIOS autodetect the values. Setting them arbitrarily can wreak serious havoc. And I wouldn't trust the "size:" numbers of the BIOS anyway. Rather, boot a DOS disk that has FDISK (or some other partitioning tool like the Ranish Partition Manager) on it - sometimes the numbers displayed in the BIOS GUI are wildly off.

[Ryu]

In most cases the hard drive is 512 byte sectors, you can calculate it as (cylinders * sectors * heads) * 512. So, (34463*63*15) * 512 = 16,674,577,920 is bit over 15.5GB. I don't know anything about the precomp and landz though.

[JoeKayzA]

I don't know anything about the precomp and landz though.

AFAIK, they shouldn't be important for calculating the disk's size. Precomp (write precompensation) has something to do with the point at which data density changes, landz (landing zone) is the point at which the drive head is parked when the there is no activity. I'm unsure whether these values are still needed at all since we have integrated drive electronics nowadays.

cheers Joe

[ManOfSteel]

Thanks for the replies.

Solar,

Check this thread, which is about a different board but tells you how to handle a 4.51pg BIOS that doesn't detect large HD's correctly.

Unofficial BIOS patches may be insecure and may render the BIOS useless. I cannot buy an official update so I guess I will keep everything as it is.

As for editing the drive settins in the BIOS... if at all possible, let the BIOS autodetect the values. Setting them arbitrarily can wreak serious havoc.

I had no intention to edit the settings manually and keep them with the values I entered. I was just trying to find out what is the maximum HDD size supported by the BIOS.

JoeKayzA,

I'm unsure whether these values are still needed at all since we have integrated drive electronics nowadays.

AFAIK, they are not used anymore.