8 GB limit on a Pavilion 8240

[videobruce 0]

I'm up against the classic 8GB limit on a 15GB HDD.

There is no bios update, it is a 430TX chipset with a PII 233 processor in a Pavilion 8240 system.

 

Is a bios issue, chipset issue or is it a processor issue?

 

Is there anything that can be done or am I screwed?

 

This is running FAT32 and eventually loading 2k. Win95 is there now on the other drive (there are 2). BTW, there is 256MB of PC66 installed.

[mezron 0]

Quote:

I'm up against the classic 8GB limit on a 15GB HDD.
There is no bios update, it is a 430TX chipset with a PII 233 processor in a Pavilion 8240 system.

Is a bios issue, chipset issue or is it a processor issue?

Is there anything that can be done or am I screwed?

This is running FAT32 and eventually loading 2k. Win95 is there now on the other drive (there are 2). BTW, there is 256MB of PC66 installed.

Nitpicking here... I don't think the TX chipset would support a Pentium 2. You sure it's not just a Pentium MMX 233? If thats the case then, yeah you could have a bios issue.

The hard drive manufacturer should have a set up disk with a utility that can overcome this. It's a hack, but it works if you can't get a bios update.

Another thing that would probably work and offer better performace as well is get a PCI IDE controller card. They're around $50 new.

Jim

[videobruce 0]

Your right it is a MMX, sorry 'bout that. I'm a AMD guy, this isn't my box! Would never own a inferior Wintel product! (hihi).

 

The ATA card is out. I really don't want to use MaxBlast (it is a Maxtor 531DX). Aren't there too many issues with that software down the road??

 

How about a bios update from someplace other than HP?

[mezron 0]

Quote:

Your right it is a MMX, sorry 'bout that. I'm a AMD guy, this isn't my box! Would never own a inferior Wintel product! (hihi).

The ATA card is out. I really don't want to use MaxBlast (it is a Maxtor 531DX). Aren't there too many issues with that software down the road??

How about a bios update from someplace other than HP?

For most people there aren't really any issues with the maxblast stuff. You wouldn't want to clone the drive if you installed it. I think all it does is create several 8GB partitions and then just tie them all together with an overlay.

You could try looking for a bios update for a generic motherboard thats exactly the same as yours. I wouldn't recommend it though. You run a good chance of not being able to boot afterwards. It's very possible that a bios update wouldn't fix it anyway. The 8GB limit was pretty common on pre-pentium 2 computers.

Jim

[DosFreak 2]

What's the matter with getting a PCI card? Heck grab a cheapo Promise DMA/66 from Best Buy.

[videobruce 0]

I did use MaxBlast V3.1 drive overlay and it did work. I did load 2k and that worked, BUT I get a SMART error on bootup even with the feature turned off in the bios. When I try to use Partition Magic I get a drive geometry error and the drive is marked as bad.

[mezron 0]

Quote:

I did use MaxBlast V3.1 drive overlay and it did work. I did load 2k and that worked, BUT I get a SMART error on bootup even with the feature turned off in the bios. When I try to use Partition Magic I get a drive geometry error and the drive is marked as bad.

Don't try to use partition magic with an overlay. An overlay creates its own type of partition scheme that partition magic doesn't understand. FYI Roxio's (formerly Adaptec) GoBack software will give a bad partition message also in partition magic.

Jim

[mezron 0]

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Those things were INITIALLY designed to get by troubles in the 486 to Pentium I era when many motherboard BIOS' & IDE Controllers could not "understand" reaching past the DOS limitation in Fat16 of 2.1gb partition tables...

Actually, the BIOS and IDE controllers didn't have any trouble with >2GB partitions. This was strictly a FAT16 limitation. All versions of Windows and DOS prior to Windows 95 OSR2 couldn't use FAT32.

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BUT I get a SMART error on bootup even with the feature turned off in the bios.

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That sounds like drive circuitry at this point... is there jumpering by some chance on the disk itself where you can turn this off?

APK

Yea, I think SMART only checks physical things on the drive. It won't (as far as I know) report filesystem errors. Did the SMART errors start popping right after you installed the overlay?

Jim

[mezron 0]

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Those things were INITIALLY designed to get by troubles in the 486 to Pentium I era when many motherboard BIOS' & IDE Controllers could not "understand" reaching past the DOS limitation in Fat16 of 2.1gb partition tables...

Actually, the BIOS and IDE controllers didn't have any trouble with >2GB partitions. This was strictly a FAT16 limitation. All versions of Windows and DOS prior to Windows 95 OSR2 couldn't use FAT32.

Are you 110% positive of that?

(IIRC, Yes it was DOS Fat16 2.1gb partition size limitations & you're right Fat32 got past that w/ NTFS & HPFS for PC's... )

* However, alot of controllers & firmware's would not let you go past that (BIOS & IDE I/O Controllers as well) & needed patches as well, again iirc... I could be wrong, but for SOME reason that sticks out in my mind as well that it was hardware-side as well!



APK

That very possible. I don't remember seeing any controllers that couldn't go past 2GB... that doesn't mean they didn't exist though

Jim

[videobruce 0]

Update:

 

The SMART error is only when I have bothe the Quantum bigfoot (the orginal 4GB drive) and the Maxtor connected. If I run the Maxtor by itself no error.

I did run PowerMax and BOTH drives pass certification!

I did change the cable, but the same thing.

[mezron 0]

Quote:

Update:

The SMART error is only when I have bothe the Quantum bigfoot (the orginal 4GB drive) and the Maxtor connected. If I run the Maxtor by itself no error.
I did run PowerMax and BOTH drives pass certification!
I did change the cable, but the same thing.

Any errors with just the Bigfoot? Might try different master/ slave settings or try cable select on the jumpers. If the two just don't want to get along you might try putting one of the drives on the secondary IDE channel with the cdrom or something like that.

Jim

[clutch 1]

APK, I agree with mezron on this. I remember PC makers sending out PCs with 4GB+ HDDs and still using Fat16 even when FAT32 was already out. Every BIOS I had ever seen would work up to 8GB (at least in theory) with the advent of the Pentium processor. Although there might have been some firmware incompatibilities, the BIOS would still have been able to address that much space. I had a 5GB WD HDD with a 486/133 (yeah, it was an "overdrive" type proc) and it worked fine with that harddrive. I think I used the EZ BIOS software from WD first, and later stopped using it with FAT32 in Win95 OSR2.

[DS3Circuit 0]

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Anyone remember WHY Logical Block Addressing (LBA in BIOS) was introduced?

It is a technique that permits a computer to manage a hard drive larger than 528MB. To do this, LBA uses a logical block address (a bit of code that maps to a dedicated cylinder-head destination on the hard drive). Twenty-eight bits of such code let the computer specify addresses on a hard drive of up to 8.4GB of data storage. LBA introduced a revolutionary way of addressing these sectors. Instead of referring to a cylinder, head, and sector number, each sector is designated with its own sector number. This sector number is sometimes referred to as a logical block number.

LBA is used with either Automatic or Translation methods. These are two types of drive parameter tables, which define the way the hard drive processes information from a data file to the computer memory. The Automatic method is used for Novell NetWare and Unix systems and Translation is recommended for machines running the Windows OS (operating system).

Hope that clarifies the need for LBA .... the last couple of posts to this thread have interested me.

[adamvjackson 0]

Installing an inexpensive ATA100/133 PCI card easily gets around the 8/32GB bios limitations... But most ATA controllers require PCI 2.2 support, which many boards of the 8GB limitation-era do not support.

[mezron 0]

One thing I'd like to point out is I think we're discussing a couple different issues. The 2GB limit I'm referring to is a PARTITION limit not a DISK SIZE limit. The 528 (I seem to remember 540MB for some reason) limit was a bios limitation. The 8GB disk size is a bios limitation. But the 2GB limit was a FAT16 limitation. You could have an 8GB disk on a DOS system... you'd just have to have 4 partitions to use it all.

 

This is kinda cool though... I'm dredging up all kinds of things about disks that I'd almost completely forgotten about

 

Jim

[videobruce 0]

I redid the Maxblast and 2k install and all is ok so far.

 

I didn't want to get another card. For $20 more I could of had a new MB! This isn't my box!

[DosFreak 2]

Quote:

I redid the Maxblast and 2k install and all is ok so far.

I didn't want to get another card. For $20 more I could of had a new MB! This isn't my box!

Depends on how you look at it.

The newer controller would have offered faster speeds. MUCH faster speeds.
Also would have offered the ability to stick the HD's on that controller and the CD drives on the mobo controller, speeding up the system even further by allowing the usage of both devices to their full capabilities.

The newer controller would not have needed an overlay which are usually trouble when needing to perform any type of HD recovery or when moving the HD to another system....or even installing a new operating system.

The newer controller would have been better supported in Windows 2000 and would likely speed up Windows 2000 quite a bit on that system.

Oh, well it's your choice.

[videobruce 0]

I understand all of that, BUT why invest $40 or so when a brand new MB (KT266a maybe) can be had for $15 more (if you look around). And for another $30 a new processor (slower Duran). With 256MB of 266 memory for another $30 you have a new system.

 

Remember this is only a 233MMX. The least I'm worried about is HDD access. The processor is the bottleneck! He is going to get a new system soon. This is for his kids as a 2nd box.

[clutch 1]

APK, mostly I was directing the comment at anything that could be in his generation of hardware. Even a 486 that I had could swing supporting of my 5GB disk (my earlier systems never even saw 500MB disks on the horizon, so it wasn't an issue). Now, I'm sure if you dig back far enough you will find all kinds of limitations, but I was referring the hardware only a few generations old, not back in the stone age...

[videobruce 0]

Thanks guys....

The only problem is I can't use Drive Image. I will try a floppy version of Norton's Ghost, but I doubt it will work to image the drive.

[mezron 0]

Quote:

Thanks guys....
The only problem is I can't use Drive Image. I will try a floppy version of Norton's Ghost, but I doubt it will work to image the drive.

I wouldn't do that... If you ghost or clone a drive you'll clone the maxblast overlay also. I'd really doubt that overlay will work on another drive. Try to find another way to back up your stuff. A backup utility like whats built into Windows or a third party program. If nothing else just manually copy all your data files to a zip drive or cd or something.

You're really limited to the things you can do with the drive once you install the overlay. Most of the disk utilities (of the off the shelf variety anyway) won't work with an overlay and you run a pretty good risk of corrupting the filesystem if you try to use them.

Jim

[adamvjackson 0]

Mezron is right on the money... if you could Ghost the drive, you'd also have the drive overlay copied, which would surely hose the OS and saved data.