Adding bigger hard drives issue

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Winding down on the "Hardware" side of things guys, will be starting on the A+ OS tomorow. Anyway, MM says that there are cheaper and better hardware solutions to DDO [Dynamic Drive Overlays] but does not mention any, what are these solutions he's referring to please? Wish I had known this as just a few months ago, I had called Dell to ask what's the max size HD I could add to the measly 40GB HD that came with this pc and they told me they will only support a max of 160GB, I had wanted to get a much bigger drive but because my pc was under warranty at that time I opted to stay within the rules.

Now that my pc is out of warrany I can add a bigger drive but don't know which max size to get, your ideas guys? Thanks.

 

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He mentions alternatives in that section - specificaly - get an extra HDD controller card that knows about big drives. Most of these cards now do - the main manufacturer of such cards is 'Promise'.

Note there may be other problems with getting a large hard drive. If your PC is old enough to not cope with drives over 160GB then there may be other gotchas. What OS are you running on it?

Harry.

 

XP Home, my pc is just over a year old.

 

if Dell is saying that the max drive they support should be 160 GB then I could get a 300GB drive and partition it in two, would this work?

 

I believe they (Dell) are referring to the size of the physical disk not any logical drives you create. The BIOS and OS needs to be able to recognise the disk prior to any partitioning that is done.

 

Er - that makes no sense. A year old machine should easily be able to deal with drives over 160GB. Del may not *support* it - but I'd be astonished if it was a physical limitation.

Care to post the Service Tag so I can investigate?

Harry.

 

Yes Bluerinse, I would agree with that. Here's the service tag Harry [Thanks]
D3WM671

 

As fas as I can see that is the drive they will sell you. I find it very hard to believe that a much larger one won't work.

I suggest you approach your dealer for a big drive, on the agreement that if it doesn't work you can take it back for no restocking charge. I think it very unlikely that you will have to take it back.

Harry.

 

Yes, that may be my best option, thanks.

 

mikehende,

hbroomhall, is spot on, if you have XP the OS will support it, the motherboard?

Basically it shold not be a prob.

Dell will not tell you what to do as it is not in there interests. They produce good computers but the only downfall is that they tend to have limited upgradeable facilities. Size of harddrive is not an issue, that is an OS problem. XP does not have that. XP should support a terabyte. ? Help, I may be wrong?

Keimos

 

Should be a question for MS then?

 

Hi mikehende,

No, blame the programmers and manufacturers. MS DOS wise. Fdisk has limitations that you have to overide!

Its the same for all, its called progress. Its just learning how to overcome it.

Basically it comes down to a hardware issue. Will the OS recognise it? They all will, but is it written into the setup program to recognise the size?

There is no blame as all OS writers have a similar problem.

Keimos

PS S**t, nobody to blame.

 

I'm running XP Pro, SP2, with four 250 gig WD hard drives, 1 terabyte of storage. Yes, XP (Pro) will support 1 terabyte (maybe more, but I don't have anymore emply slots available).

 

is that noisy?

 

With that amount of rotating hardware it may even hover.....

Harry.

 

a new prototype of portable computer!

anyway