Good deal on 250GB Hard Drive

[Mark Lamutt]

Western Digital 250GB 7200RPM drive at Circuit City this week for $249.99 + tax - $140 in mail in rebates. Total cost $100 + tax on $250.

Not a bad deal for a big drive. Drive is the WDC2500JRBTL. Enjoy!

[EncoderHouse]

Do you need a controller card for a drive that big?

[Opus4]

Windows XP can use that large a drive natively... at least it did w/my Maxtor 200Gb drive. If you don't have XP, you may need a new controller, depending on your current one.

I guess that means the answer is "maybe".

- Andy

[insomniac]

Winxp supports larger HD natively, but most/all old chipsets dont. So, if you are running an old mobo, expect to need a card.

On the bright side, most large HD's are coming standard with cards in the box (at least they were 4 months ago).

I.

[dkardatzke]

I just used a Dell Dimension 4600 for a SageTV Media PC running Win XP Home and Dell told me the largest HD I could use was a 200GB. Why the discrepancy in the above and what Dell told me? What are the factors that determine the HD size you can use w/o a controller card?

Thanks.

[Opus4]

A quick search of the Microsoft Knowledge Base found this article:
http://support.microsoft.com/default...d=kb;en;303013 [Edit - pointed to English language version. Don't know why it linked to the Russian language version!]

It mentions exceeding 137GB, but doesn't list the upper limit... and I don't remember it off the top of my head.

Additional articles:

Maxtor

Western Digital

I suppose I am not entirely clear which IDE controllers built into motherboards will be capable of this. A MB BIOS update might still be needed. My BIOS from pre-XP days didn't needed updating, though.

I'm not sure why Dell would say that 200GB is some sort of new limit, unless there is a problem on that particular MB. But, 48 bit addressing would normally extend the 128/137GB limit well beyond 200GB... There could very well be some sort of limit to that Dell machine, but I've learned to not always trust tech support reps. Perhaps try another support rep??


- Andy

[falchulk]

If your system can handle >137gig then it will do 250 no problem. I bout this drive a month ago with rebates that brought it down to $179. I thought that was a good deal. Should have waited a little longer.......

[Mark Lamutt]

Your bios has to support the 48 bit LBA, and then you either have to be running XP SP1 with the most current ATAPI.sys driver loaded (from after SP1 - I had to load this), or you have to use a controller card. This drive comes with a controller card included.

[EncoderHouse]

Well then that's not for me! I don't have anymore PCI slots so the controller card is a waist. I think I’ll just upgrade my motherboard for one with SATA, and then I will never have this problem. .

[Opus4]

Just because it comes with a controller doesn't mean you _have_ to use it. That is still a good price for such a drive. My circa 1997/98 mb worked with the large drive support built into Windows XP -- and that 200GB drive was definitely not accessible outside Windows XP. So, I wouldn't assume you can't use the drive w/o the controller... but you may still be left with determining if your BIOS will allow it.

On the other hand, if you are _looking_ for an excuse to get a new mb...

- Andy

[Opus4]

Originally posted by Mark Lamutt
Your bios has to support the 48 bit LBA

I'm still not entirely certain this is required, since the Maxtor Option #1 (in their PDF at the above link) to break the 128/137GB barrier doesn't mention the BIOS requirement -- it does mention that as a requirement if you don't have the appropriate version of Windows installed. They do, however, instruct you to run their utility, MaxBlast 3 or the Maxtor Big Drive Enabler... but the instructions seem to indicate it is just making a registry change to enable the support.

Yes, I understand I could just be unclear on the instruction details, but that is how it appears to read.

- Andy