Western Digital "special edition"

[confus-ed]

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by Prince Abaddon:
<strong>Ok, so just by updating the BIOS that can let me use these drives? </strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Maybe maybe not from the mannual - '2x 40 pin Bus mastering E-IDE/ATAPI Ports". My experience says that most 40 pin controllers can't do it, but there are exceptions....

You are gonna have to ask, but since I looked there is a faq with the answer for you <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" />
<a href="http://www.soyousa.com/products/proddesc.php?id=71" target="_blank">Maximum supported hard disk size for Socket 370 Motherboard - Soyo FAQs</a>

[Platypus]

Maximum supported hard disk size for Slot 1 Motherboards:

<a href="http://www.soyousa.com/kb/kbdesc.php?id=28" target="_blank">http://www.soyousa.com/kb/kbdesc.php?id=28</a>

Sadly, 32GB, apparrently that went with the Award BIOS. As NooNoo's link reveals, the most up-to date BIOS revision is 1998, you could try it but they probably weren't thinking ahead to >32G drives then.

You could try overlay software, but IMHO that's a last resort, it makes things messy if anything goes wrong. A better solution if you really want to go with this for your current system would be to use a PCI drive controller e.g. Promise, which will have a suitable BIOS and UDMA to match the new drive.

Also you don't mention your O.S. Win95 (all) can't use over 32G either.

[Prince Abaddon]

ok then, I went window shopping and found out that 30GB HD are discontinued. But I don't want to get a 20GB HD either. So can I just get a 40GB HD and partition it?

I'm currently using Windows XP but planning to switch back to Windows 98.(I want to use Opengl for my games, not software rendering)

[Platypus]

Originally posted by Prince Abaddon
So can I just get a 40GB HD and partition it?

A 40G drive should have a jumper setting to "clip" the size to 32G for the present. If you try to just put a 32G partition on the full drive, the results can be unpredictable depending on how the BIOS is written. In the future if you upgrade to a m/board which can recognise the full size, you will be able to re-partition the drive to full size and re-load it.

[Prince Abaddon]

Originally posted by PIatypus


A 40G drive should have a jumper setting to "clip" the size to 32G for the present. If you try to just put a 32G partition on the full drive, the results can be unpredictable depending on how the BIOS is written. In the future if you upgrade to a m/board which can recognise the full size, you will be able to re-partition the drive to full size and re-load it.

so can I reuse the other 8GB? or is it just like throwing 8 GBs away.

What 40GB HD out there support "Clip"ing?

[Platypus]

Originally posted by Prince Abaddon


so can I reuse the other 8GB? or is it just like throwing 8 GBs away.

What 40GB HD out there support "Clip"ing?

Yes, you will be able to reclaim the unused 8GB in the future when the drive is transferred to a system that understands >32G drives.

Someone else may know more brand detail than me, but to my knowledge, any decent brand should have a facility to limit capacity to 32G. I mostly lean toward Western Digital, but the 40G Seagate Barracuda and Samsung SpinPoint I have on the desk at the moment both have jumper settings for this.