160GB Disk and oldish MOBO

25 Feb 2005 9:33 PM

Captain Blammo

I have an Asus A7V333 with onboard RAID, and was wondering if anyone knew of
any issues it might have with a 160GB hard disk, which I'm about to buy.

Thanks for any info or pointers!

Ewan

25 Feb 2005 9:38 PM

philo

"Captain Blammo" <e***@nbnet.nb.ca> wrote in message
news:7RMTd.9444$oh4.346485@ursa-nb00s0.nbnet.nb.ca...
> I have an Asus A7V333 with onboard RAID, and was wondering if anyone knew
of
> any issues it might have with a 160GB hard disk, which I'm about to buy.
>
> Thanks for any info or pointers!
>
>

an older mobo prob. won;t support a 160gig drive...
if not ...all you need to do is get a PCI controller (prob $30 or so)

26 Feb 2005 12:24 AM

DaveW

That motherboard's original BIOS will not recognize a harddrive larger than
137 GB. You can try to find a newer BIOS for that board that WILL recognize
a 160 GB drive.

--
DaveW

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"Captain Blammo" <e***@nbnet.nb.ca> wrote in message
news:7RMTd.9444$oh4.346485@ursa-nb00s0.nbnet.nb.ca...
>I have an Asus A7V333 with onboard RAID, and was wondering if anyone knew
>of
> any issues it might have with a 160GB hard disk, which I'm about to buy.
>
> Thanks for any info or pointers!
>
> Ewan
>
>

26 Feb 2005 1:34 AM

General Schvantzkoph

On Fri, 25 Feb 2005 21:33:55 +0000, Captain Blammo wrote:

> I have an Asus A7V333 with onboard RAID, and was wondering if anyone knew of
> any issues it might have with a 160GB hard disk, which I'm about to buy.
>
> Thanks for any info or pointers!
>
> Ewan

Linux won't have any problem with it, Windows might. If there is a BIOS
update for your motherboard then you'll want to install it, that will
probably fix the 137G limit. If there is no BIOS update available then get
a Promise card, it will give you a couple of extra IDE channels and it
will fix the address space limitation.

26 Feb 2005 3:47 AM

kony

On Fri, 25 Feb 2005 21:33:55 GMT, "Captain Blammo"
<e***@nbnet.nb.ca> wrote:

>I have an Asus A7V333 with onboard RAID, and was wondering if anyone knew of
>any issues it might have with a 160GB hard disk, which I'm about to buy.
>
>Thanks for any info or pointers!
>
>Ewan
>

The motherboard's Promise Raid controller is PDC20276,
ATA133, it does support 48 bit lba, drives over 128GB
including 160GB. If there are any bugs in the earliest
bioses, at worst you would need to update the bios to one
fairly modern if not the newest.

15 Mar 2005 5:55 PM

Captain Blammo

Awesome, thanks for the info!

Are there any utilities to test a new drive to confirm there will be no
problems? I wouldn't mind running one just to be sure.

Ewan

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"kony" <spam@spam.com> wrote in message
news:tgtv11dbrdnq9a7pk4l2936puvac34g8cs@4ax.com...
> On Fri, 25 Feb 2005 21:33:55 GMT, "Captain Blammo"
> <e***@nbnet.nb.ca> wrote:
>
> >I have an Asus A7V333 with onboard RAID, and was wondering if anyone knew
of
> >any issues it might have with a 160GB hard disk, which I'm about to buy.
> >
> >Thanks for any info or pointers!
> >
> >Ewan
> >
>
> The motherboard's Promise Raid controller is PDC20276,
> ATA133, it does support 48 bit lba, drives over 128GB
> including 160GB. If there are any bugs in the earliest
> bioses, at worst you would need to update the bios to one
> fairly modern if not the newest.

15 Mar 2005 9:53 PM

kony

On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 17:55:56 GMT, "Captain Blammo"
<e***@nbnet.nb.ca> wrote:

>Awesome, thanks for the info!
>
>Are there any utilities to test a new drive to confirm there will be no
>problems? I wouldn't mind running one just to be sure.
>
>Ewan

Don't think so, primarily all you'd need to focus on is
whether full capacity is detected. However, IIRC that board
had a large difference in performance from a Via PCI latency
patch, as it had too much on the somewhat mediocre Via PCI
bus. Google for "George Breeze latency" and/or "viapfd", or
the newest version should be available at
http://www.viaarena.com in the drivers section for "3rd
party Raid controllers" just past the operating system
selection menu.