Size of hard drive PC can handle?

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TomW

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Hello, I was wondering what determines how big of a hard drive a PC can use? I mean for updating purposes, I can't take a PC that came with say a 10 gig and stick in a 60 gig can I? TomW
 
It depends on your motherboard, you should refer to your manual to check what size HDD your motherboard supports.
 
to comment on this. I put a 120hd in my 3y.o. comp. I was able to transfer eveything over and it works fine. The only prob is that my comp or mobo only reads 111 gb instead of 120gb. I have the original in there too that is 20gb. I think there something about the mobo and how much hd gb is can reconize. I would like to get my other 9 gb if someone could tell me it's possible and how to do it.
 
what ive found wit my old comp is that the biggest drive the bios can pick up is 35gig but my smallest is 40 (my old 20 blow up on me) so i had to get a "lend" of my mates 2gig and thats what i have windows installed on lol, but ive got to 40 in and windows picks that up np.
 
Hi, my book for the Biostar M5ALA says, PCI Enhanced IDE Built-in On Board
-supports 4 IDE hard disk drives
-Supports Ultra DMA/33,Bus Master Mode
-supports IDE interface with CD-ROM
-Supports high capacity hard disk drives
-Supports LBA mode
-Supports PIO modes up to Mode 4 Timings, ans Multiword DMA Mode 0,1,2 with Independent Timing of up to 4 Drives
Supports booting from LS-120 "Super Disk" or Iomega ZIP 100MB disk

AWARD BIOS
Supports PnP functions

I can't find any real numbers on hard disk size in book for board. Tom W
 
Ultra DMA/33, that thing is old. I would just test to see if it works on that machine. you can always return the hard drive right? check the store policy on hard drive returns.
 
I see it has a user mode where you can type in the specs of the hard drive if not picked up on auto. But still can't find much on size limit eccept what MicroBell said. It did detect the 12 gig bigfoot and specs matched what it said on hard drive so I guess all I can do is try the seagate 17.2 when I get it. The seagate has ultra DMA\66, book says it will work but read at 33 not 66. I have also seen alot about what a piece of junk this board is, especially set at 100 speed TomW
 
Well I got the seagate model st317221A, 17.2 GB and it would not detect it. I hooked it up on the newer systemax to see what would happen and it picked it up right away and I formated it and tested it with scans and all came out good so must be to much for this PIONEX junk. I downloaded a M5ALA BIOS onto a floppy. I will be getting in way over my head now but, How do I know if it is any newer/better than what is installed now? I hear changing BIOS is hard to do and get it right. Anyone have any information on updating the BIOS in this thing? {M5ALA ver 2.0}. It is working with the 6GB bigfoot OK right now and if there is a chance of messing things up because I don't know what I am doing I will leave it alone. I can't find anything in the download as to a version or year of BIOS. I can boot the thing and get a BIOS version when it comes up and put it here and maybe some of you real good puter guys can tell me if it is the last update or not. OK? TomW
 
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