120 GB HD on a BX board?

[Jan Kivar]

I've thought of replacing 60 GB 120GXP in my older system by buying a 120 GB drive. I'm thinking of buying the new Samsung SP1203N, or even SP1213N (8MB cache) if it ever comes out on the open market here. 7200.7 is a viable option too (8MB cache version, as it has three year warranty), but based on what I've read at SilentPCReview it seems that Samsung would better choice.

The problem is: Will my ABit BX6-r2 be able to recognise the whole capacity? Both Samsung and Seagate support ATA33, so no problem there.

ABit's website had no info on the matter, and Google wasn't my friend either...

Cheers,

Jan

 

[Mercutio]

BX will recognize it. You may need a BIOS flash, but it's nothing painful.

 

[blakerwry]

BX will recognize it. You may need a BIOS flash, but it's nothing painful.

BX should... but if the motherboard maker hasn't continued support for the board through regular BIOS updates then you may be stuck at ~62GB.. maybe not.

At worst you'll have to go out and buy an add-in IDE controller like a SIIG or Promise Ultra series to get it to work.

 

[Buck]

As long as the system is able to POST, and you can install an OS on the drive, you should be fine (you may be stuck with more then one partition). If your OS has limitations in translating the drive (due to the BIOS), you can always give the Intel Application Accelerator a try after the OS is installed.

 

[honold]

48bit lba isn't done on bx by iaa

 

[Jan Kivar]

OK, I hate to say this, but for once (at least... ), the US site of any global company is better than the global site. I spent like half an hour in the global site of ABit scrolling through the FAQs, not founding anything useful.

Then I went to www.abit-usa.com (actually, I used the language bar in the global site), and clicked on "Knowledge Base". Somehow there are all the HDD support questions presented on "Hot FAQs". By clicking "Does my motherboard support 75GB harddisk?", I got immediately the appropriate info. My motherboard does support the 75 GB 75GXP (according to the link), so I think I'm fine up to the 137 GB limit. Not bad from a chipset that has been designed 5+ years ago, right?

Other people have had some trouble getting past the 64 GB size limit that is in some of the i440-based systems. Seems that I'm lucky... [more likely ABit has bit better support than some the smaller manufacturers]

Merc, I always use the latest BIOS version. The problem is that there are no newer BIOSs, the latest one was released in May 2000. My board is currently using 1300 MHz Celeron II. Quite nice, as the latest BIOS' release info says "Supports Celeron 566(66) and 600(66) MHz CPUs"...

Honold, IIRC BX isn't supported by IAA, but I don't think that's such a big loss. :wink:

Cheers,

Jan

 

[Jan Kivar]

Update: I did finally get the SP1213N, and it works.

Jan

 

[CougTek]

SP1213N

Not read / remember the whole thread...is this the new Samsung 120GB with 80GB platters and an 8MB buffer?

 

[CougTek]

Just read the BX support for 120GB HDD thread in the Tech Support forum ... you lucky bastard. I (we) want Winbench Disk transfer rates.

 

[Santilli]

Promise Ultra

shudder... :roll: :evil:
s

 

[Jan Kivar]

Just read the BX support for 120GB HDD thread in the Tech Support forum ... you lucky bastard. I (we) want Winbench Disk transfer rates.

Those could be interesting... I have the drive in my old BX system, which is limited to ATA33. Would You really like to see a flat ~30 MB/s transfer rate graph? [PERHAPS I should have tested it first on my newer computer... I was too keen to see if it works or not.]

Cheers,

Jan

 

[Jan Kivar]

Hmm... If anyone will host the pictures, I could nuke the current installation, and run WinBench and Atto on my newer computer. I assume that the graphs would look a lot like the ones in this Digit-Life review.

Cheers,

Jan