well wouldnt ya know

[absolutedestiny]

You know, I didnt know about most motherboard IDE controllers not being able to deal with HDs bigger than 137gig.

I also didnt know you'd need a Promise TX2 Ultra controller (or similar) to use one even if you have a new motherboard like an nforce2.

Lucky me, I already had a Promise TX2 Ultra IDE controler :)

Comments

[quu.livejournal.com]

if you don't have an 80 pin cable... even if your motherboard suports ATA/133 it will revert to ATA33 speeeds

[absolutedestiny.livejournal.com]

Yeah dont worry - all my cables are 80 pin. It wasnt an ATA133 issue.

It's the drive size that was the issue. I got a 160gig drive by win2k was detecting it as 128gig.

Seems that even the nforce IDE controller cant handle big drives as explained here:

http://members.inventyourself.com/members/forums/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=201

Re:

[quu.livejournal.com]

that i knew about... but i thought the nforce chipset suported ATA133

doe you have an nforce or an nforce2?

i KNOW the nforce2's suport ata/133 becasue I have done it

[absolutedestiny.livejournal.com]

I have an nforce2 board. The bios detected the drive as a "160gig drive" but could only count 130000mb of storage, which is why I needed to use the PCI IDE controller to get the full capacity.

As the link above notes, it's an issue with LBA counting rather than the ATA133 standard.

Re:

[quu.livejournal.com]

yes but with the nforce2 and windows XP I accessed a 250 gig drive... at full capacity (230 usable)

[absolutedestiny.livejournal.com]

Were you using the ATA controller or the Serial ATA one? I know the SATA controller can handle larger than 137 but I'm saving that for some nice SATA drives in a year or two.

Re:

[quu.livejournal.com]

ATA... they don't make SATA 250s yet....

the nforce2 has built in ATA/133

the biggest difference beterrn ATA/100 and ATA/133 is that ATA/133 has 48bit addressing

[absolutedestiny.livejournal.com]

"ATA... they don't make SATA 250s yet...."

Sure but you can still use an ATA drive on the SATA controller with an adapter.

"the nforce2 has built in ATA/133"

Yeah, either it's a bios settings problem or it's a driver issue. I dont think it's a driver issue though - U have the latest nforce drivers.

[absolutedestiny.livejournal.com]

OK, it appears to be a problem specifically with the Abit NF7-S board and not-quite-new bios revisions.

I could update my bios to fix it, apparently, but I'm going to leave that until there's a real problem I need fixing or there's a update which fixes something potentially damaging.

[aluminumstudios.livejournal.com]

What if you have two 137 gig drives and want to stripe them together on a RAID controller ... do you know if it would take a special IDE RAID controller to recognize the larger stripped RAID volume or if it's only an issue with individual drives?

[absolutedestiny.livejournal.com]

I honestly dont know.

[quu.livejournal.com]

I do I do!

[quu.livejournal.com]

if the raid controller can recongize the drives... then when they are stiped togethor they will be 2x the size...

its an indivudual drive issue... the OS (windows 2000/XP) can suport partitions 67 terrabytes in size due to NTFS... his case is the drive controller...