The major problem when buying one of those new, gigantic harddrives is
making your old computer able to utilize all of the added capacity.
There are lots of barriers to overcome: some have to do with
limitations of the OS, most seem to have to do with limitations of your
computer's BIOS, and more specifically the way it addresses the
harddrive - whether it uses CHS (Cylinder Head Sector) or LBA (Logical
Block Addressing) addressing.
It appears as though most BIOS manufacturers had not foreseen the rapid
increase of harddrive real estate during the last few years, and had
deliberately constructed their BIOSes so, that they couldn't manage
drives over, say 8.4 GB. In order to save money in the manufacturing
process?
Anyway, there seems to be three kinds of solutions to this problem:
1. Upgrade your computer's BIOS
2. Get a separate hd-controller card with a modern BIOS
3. Use a special driver, like that supplied with a program as
Disk Manager.
Very informative and authoritative information on this subject can be
found in an article by Charles M. Kozierok of PC Guide, titled
"Overcoming BIOS Disk Drive Barriers", at:
http://www.storagereview.com/guide/guide_over_barriers.html
Another must-read is the "white paper" on the same subject from
harddrive manufacturer Maxtor, at:
http://www.maxtor.com/technology/whitepapers/63001.html
Lars-Einar Jansson
Stockholm, Sweden
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