I have a feeling he posted that in the wrong thread, anyway.....
torque: You will get the full 160 wether your mobo supports it or not. I.e. The BIOS may only say its a 120, but when you get into Windows it will correct it itself and give you the full space.
Save way I used an 80GB in my old K6-2, it only saw it as a 60GB (Max the mobo could take) but as soon as I got into Windows, it said it was a 80GB. Its the same as when you turn off the CD-Drives in the BIOS but Windows can still detect them even if the BIOS doesnt, it bypasses it.
Originally posted by NightShade737 I have a feeling he posted that in the wrong thread, anyway.....
torque: You will get the full 160 wether your mobo supports it or not. I.e. The BIOS may only say its a 120, but when you get into Windows it will correct it itself and give you the full space.
Save way I used an 80GB in my old K6-2, it only saw it as a 60GB (Max the mobo could take) but as soon as I got into Windows, it said it was a 80GB. Its the same as when you turn off the CD-Drives in the BIOS but Windows can still detect them even if the BIOS doesnt, it bypasses it.
I can't confirm this, I've never seen a device work in windows that wasn't detected first by the bios... since when did windows suddenly operate independently of the bios/motherboard? The bios sends windows updates...
What confuses me more is if you connect the 160GB to the motherboard controller and try to fdisk, no matter what you're going to get 120GB max. How can windows suddenly repartition the disk to see more?
The drive should be detected, but it will be detected as the wrong speed by the BIOS as it doesnt have support for enough cylinders, heads, sectors etc, but Windows automatically picks up the correct perameters and therefore detects the right size as it speaks directly to the drive and not the BIOS.
Originally posted by NightShade737 The drive should be detected, but it will be detected as the wrong speed by the BIOS as it doesnt have support for enough cylinders, heads, sectors etc, but Windows automatically picks up the correct perameters and therefore detects the right size as it speaks directly to the drive and not the BIOS.
Windows will see it corectly as a 160GB, but it's still only going to be 120GB and you're still not going to be able to repartition it to utilize the extra/missing 40GB unless he uses partition magic.
BTw, if it were as easy as you say, why are companies spending more money and including PCI adapters with the drives?
Originally posted by NightShade737 Thats really not much of an issue considering. Linux should see it correctly and Windows has partition magic. Whats the problem?
NS
He's an end user and we're throwing more stuff than needs to be into the mix, run the drive off the PCI adapter, run the maxblast software, and he's done and magically has his 160GB at max transfer rate available to him. Time saved=priceless.
yeah.. but if i had this 160 gig on the pci adapter ... and on the same IDE i had my current drive... i wouldn't be able to boot...
Additionally, some system BIOSes do not support
booting to drives attached to an ATA card, so that you may only beable to use this drive as additional storage and not as the boot drive.
so i'd have to have my existing drive on my onboard controller and then this new 160 gig on the pci card.... seems kinda like a hassle...
stoopid.. read pg 25 of that document (Operating System Solutions) and see if those would work...
Originally posted by Torque so i'd have to have my existing drive on my onboard controller and then this new 160 gig on the pci card.... seems kinda like a hassle...
Without reading that section, I would strongly recommend placing the 160GB on the PCI and leaving the rest of your PC as it is (since the other ide devices are probably running as fast as they can right now on your motherboard's controller).
The 160GB would be a perfect match for mass storage and file sharing in the setup you described . having a seperate PCI IDE controller card gives you the flexibility of adding more and more ide devices in the future, should you want to. Keeping the boot disk on the motherboard isn't a big deal unless you want to reformat and reinstall to use the 160GB as your primary boot drive.
Based on page 25 I think you should be able to boot from the PCI adapter just fine, that statement's intended for older motherboards and a CYA by maxtor.
Originally posted by Torque well, will i lose out on speed or anything if i continue to boot of my current drive?
or will any program i use off of the 160 use the 8mb cache?
You won't be GAINING any speed as you'll be running the same setup, but the transfers from the 160GB will be very fast. I wouldn't recommend reinstalling just to get the ATA133 support, the difference (as NS noted) between ATA100 and ATA133 isn't truly 33% as the numbers suggest. The access speed (ATA value) only determines the speed of data being accessed off the drive running that speed, so basically, unless your applications and operating system resides on the ATA133 drive, most applications won't see any performance benefit (as small as it really is). Any data you store on the 160GB drive WILL be accessed at ATA133 speeds though.
Comments
torque: You will get the full 160 wether your mobo supports it or not. I.e. The BIOS may only say its a 120, but when you get into Windows it will correct it itself and give you the full space.
Save way I used an 80GB in my old K6-2, it only saw it as a 60GB (Max the mobo could take) but as soon as I got into Windows, it said it was a 80GB. Its the same as when you turn off the CD-Drives in the BIOS but Windows can still detect them even if the BIOS doesnt, it bypasses it.
NS
THANKS for the info...:D
I can't confirm this, I've never seen a device work in windows that wasn't detected first by the bios... since when did windows suddenly operate independently of the bios/motherboard? The bios sends windows updates...
What confuses me more is if you connect the 160GB to the motherboard controller and try to fdisk, no matter what you're going to get 120GB max. How can windows suddenly repartition the disk to see more?
NS
Windows will see it corectly as a 160GB, but it's still only going to be 120GB and you're still not going to be able to repartition it to utilize the extra/missing 40GB unless he uses partition magic.
BTw, if it were as easy as you say, why are companies spending more money and including PCI adapters with the drives?
NS
He's an end user and we're throwing more stuff than needs to be into the mix, run the drive off the PCI adapter, run the maxblast software, and he's done and magically has his 160GB at max transfer rate available to him. Time saved=priceless.
so i'd have to have my existing drive on my onboard controller and then this new 160 gig on the pci card.... seems kinda like a hassle...
stoopid.. read pg 25 of that document (Operating System Solutions) and see if those would work...
thanks
Without reading that section, I would strongly recommend placing the 160GB on the PCI and leaving the rest of your PC as it is (since the other ide devices are probably running as fast as they can right now on your motherboard's controller).
The 160GB would be a perfect match for mass storage and file sharing in the setup you described
or will any program i use off of the 160 use the 8mb cache?
You won't be GAINING any speed as you'll be running the same setup, but the transfers from the 160GB will be very fast. I wouldn't recommend reinstalling just to get the ATA133 support, the difference (as NS noted) between ATA100 and ATA133 isn't truly 33% as the numbers suggest. The access speed (ATA value) only determines the speed of data being accessed off the drive running that speed, so basically, unless your applications and operating system resides on the ATA133 drive, most applications won't see any performance benefit (as small as it really is). Any data you store on the 160GB drive WILL be accessed at ATA133 speeds though.
http://www.digital-daily.com/motherboard/abit-nf7s/
http://www.extremeoverclocking.com/reviews/motherboards/ABIT_NF7_v2.0_1.html
**EDIT** I mis-read the specs (missed the 133 somehow).
You will NOT need the PCI adapter card, it DOES support ATA133 onboard the motherboard.
Sweet board BTW, I highly recommend it (and I rarely recommend Abit stuff).
Good luck finding a version 2, took myself and a friend 20 minutes of pricewatch surfing to find a decent price on one about a month ago.
thanx for the help stoooooopid
lol
That's the same place we bought his
(we were looking hard for an out of state supplier but found none at a reasonable price, so we had to go with excaliber).