What decides Hard disk size?

[ranjithbajpe]

Hi to all..
I have a strange problem. I got P3 Atx, pc. When I wnated to put a new Harddisk of 40 GB or 20 Gb of 7200 Rpm it wont support.
Now what i wanted to know is, what decides Harddisk size and speed.
1. Processor?
2. Mother Board?
Or
any other issues?
What is the different in using 7200 RPM and 4200 RPM speed Harddisk.
Can I use 7200 RPM 40 GB Disk with P3 ATX motherboard PC.

Please someone reply this

[great_manish]

this is not qna section

[Darthvader]

It depends on the mboard bios...u have to flash it

[icecoolz]

not really...it depends on ur mobo period. Flashing ur mobo may sometimes give you better results but the limiting factor is your motherboard

[pimpom]

The BIOS on some very old motherboards could not detect a hard disk larger than 8GB. Next came the 32GB limit. It's unusual to have a PIII ATX mobo unable to work with a 20GB HDD.

If your mobo has a 32GB limit, then you have to either flash the BIOS with a newer BIOS file downloaded from the manufacturer's website, or use the 32GB limiting jumper on the hard disk and use it as a 32GB drive.

The main difference between a 7200rpm HDD and those with a lower rpm is speed, though newer HDDs also incorporate newer technology to make them quieter and more efficient.

Yes, you can use a 7200rpm 40GB hard disk with a P3 ATX mobo except for the BIOS limitation mentioned above.

[AlienTech]

It could also be the mother board HD controller chipset. I had problems where it would not work with certain hard drives. IE my 6 gig seagate would not work on many newier mother boards. But the 60 gig maxtors would work. You can always use a PCI hard drive controller board which fixes many of this problems. But if you end up not getting all the capacity of the hard drisk you have to either flash the mother board bios or use a disk overlay program like disk manager which lets you use bigger hard disks than is supported.

[klinux]

The disk Overlay suggested above by ALIEN is a gr8 way to use large capacity hdd . Use the 32gb limit jumper and use the Disk manager (samsung) or disk wizard (seagate) to create a disk drive overlay for ur HDD . i am using a new 80 gb seagate 7200.7 on a P1 motherboard , which didnt even support 30 gb hdd . i was running my old maxtor 30gb for 3 years this way . So if u dont want to fiddle with bios flash and still want to use full capacity HDD u can try this . Seagate even offers ISO cd images to create DDO .

A few steps r given here .

http://www.thinkdigit.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9911

http://www.thinkdigit.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9330