PDA

Click to See Complete Forum and Search --> : can award BIOS support 80Gb

miriamr
09-27-2001, 06:28 PM
Hhow do I know if my bios can support an 80Gb EIDE harddisk. Im planning to buy one but I dont know if my bios will support it. My BIOS is award and my motherboard is gainward running an AMD k62-450.

Hope someone can help me. thanks. :D
Timbo
09-27-2001, 09:31 PM
Whether or not your BIOS supports 80GB isn't truely a question you need to ask yourself as far as I know. Your controller is probably a ATA 33 or 66, this will affect your performance, but your new hard drive still should work no problem (although maybe a bit slower). Size limitations come with the OS (and FS) as far as I know. Yes, I'm sure Linux native FS supports 80GB. The only problem you may run into is with LILO, if you choose to use it. In which case there are ways to get around. Someone ban me if I'm wrong ;)

Timbo
Malakin
09-27-2001, 10:59 PM
Motherboard bios's do indeed have limitations. I personally ran into this problem once when I was planning on putting a 60gig hard drive into an asus p6np5 (ppro mobo).

Usually the motherboard manufacturers website will list information like this. Gainwards website does not appear to list this information, you could always try calling them I suppose.
DMR
09-27-2001, 11:53 PM
Malakin is right. For very large hard drives, the BIOS can still be a limitation. Your particular Linux kenel version plays a role as well.

The version of your BIOS will dictate, among other things, the max drive size it will support. The BIOS manufacturers usually post upgrades for BIOSes that are capable of being upgraded via software (flashed). Check this site (http://www.wimsbios.com/) for specifics. If your BIOS (regardless of what version you have) doesn't support your 80G drive, you could try a drive geometry tranlation utility such as EZ-BIOS (http://www.storagesoft.com/products/drive_utils/ez_bios.asp). If you decide to use a translation utility, make sure it is compatible with Linux.

As for Linux-specific issues, read the Large Disk HOW-TO (http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Large-Disk-HOWTO.html) at linuxdoc.org. It has a lot of info on BIOS and OS drive-size limitations.