How big Harddrive can I use with my motherboard?

[Christian]

I'm making a ftp-server out of an 350 MHz 256 MB Ram computer.
I saw that one can buy a 120 Gb harddrive for under 120 $ these days, so I want to buy 2 or more for this computer.

But... apparantly theres a limit for how big HDD:s you can drive from a certain motherboard. I've been searching the web and I just can't find anything about the ability to drive larger disks with old motherboards. Mine is a Microstar i810, does anyone know anything about this subject so I'm certain it will work before i buy the disks.

Ps. The Hdd:s I have in mind is the IBM Desktstar 180 GXP.

Best Regards,
Chris

[Netlist]

Originally posted by Christian
Mine is a Microstar i810,
Chris

Microstar=MSI
i810= Intel Chipset 810
However, we need more info.
You should open your PC and look what's written on the Motherboard between the last two PCI-slot.
Try to find them and let us know.

Greetings
/Hugo

[Christian]

It reas MS6178 VER:1.0

I installed a programm called SANDRA, which tells you just about anything about you computer hardware. Anything else let me know!!

/Chris

[Rudy]

1. Update your bios to the latest version( check site msi ), and it will work, but not at 100% the speed off the HD's, MB support only ATA33 and ATA 66, sow ATA66 it will be.

2. Buy a ATA100 raid PCI card and attach the HD's to this controller, still if you dont update your bios you have to boot with this device, or else it's a no go.

Greetz Rudy / who run's his 160G FTP on a P200MMX

[Christian]

Hi Rudy,

So updating the bios to the newest version will be enough for me to support 2 120GB disks, or do I have to go with point 2 also?

regards,
Chris

[jleaman]

You should actually get a promise card instead. With is much better would let the hard drives run faster and would support the 2 x 120gig hard drives. If that old system is a 350mhz chances are it is ata 33 or 66. the promise card would take the full advantage of the drives 133ata. the cards are easy to install and there also cheap too.


p.s what kind of stuff will be on the ftp server..

The server that i use has 2 promise cards and uses the on board ata and has 690 gigs right now. : O )

[fdegrove]

Hi,

So updating the bios to the newest version will be enough for me to support 2 120GB disks, or do I have to go with point 2 also?

Actually either one would do although I see little point in using a raid card with just a pack of two disks.

The promise card should work too if speed is an issue but again I see little advantage in that for an FTP server.

If you want speed go scsi and use a real scsi raid card with at least 8Mb of onboard cache memory.

Don't expect them to come cheap though...

Cheers,

[jleaman]

My point was to get the Promise card. NOT RAID. was to help him support the 120 gig Plus hard drives.. and to buy a scsi 120 gig hdd you might want to sell your car heh to pay for it. The board that your talking about if im correct it wont support any thing above 60.o gig with the bios updated. so a cheap 40$ or less. promise card will do the trick.

[fdegrove]

Hi Jason,

My point was to get the Promise card. NOT RAID.

I know what you're saying but Promise offers both, i.e. standard ATAPI cards to allow for ATA100 and 133 and also raid versions of those cards.

Again, don't let the announced speeds fool, they're measured peaks you'll never obtain in real life apps.

The board that your talking about if im correct it wont support any thing above 60.o gig with the bios updated. so a cheap 40$ or less. promise card will do the trick.

If the bios update doesn't support 60 Gb + HDs then the Promise card is a nice alternative but it take a PCI slot.

Another one that's free is a bios overlay file that fools the bios into thinking it has a smaller disk installed.

Most HD manufacturers have/had such soft on their site or it comes with the disk on a floppy back in the mid nineties.
I don't know if this was still further developped though.

Cheers,

[Rudy]

Comment on post 7

Frank i don't really agree on that one. Onboard controllers have a CPU usage > 30%, while the raid cards have a ratio off <10% , this with the same data transfer.

With the raid card max data transfer will the double off the transfer off 1 harddisk ( well almost ), with the onboard controller you will only use 2/3 ( not 100% true ) off the maximum transfer off the HD

Now, i dont think all off this matters, i gues you are running a simple 100Mbit network, if so don't bother on spending to mutch money on the raid controller, becouse it wouldn't matter anything on the max transfer throu your network, either way wil easely get about 10MByte/sec , still plenty for home usage

Greetz Rudy