Second hard drive: Part 2

[Howard Gibson]

On Wed, 1 Oct 2003 14:52:56 -0400
Phillip Mills <pmills-5bG9SNWDbRX3fQ9qLvQP4Q at public.gmane.org> wrote:

> I'm still trying to get enough information to feel comfortable about 
> sticking a second hard drive in my PC with some hope of it working.
> 
> The machine is a Dell XPS B733: Pentium 3, about 3 or 4 years old.  I 
> went shopping yesterday and the first person I talked to who sounded 
> knowledgeable said that a current 40GB drive would *probably* work, but 
> larger ones might not be recognized by the IDE controller.  My user 
> manual says the Dell uses ATA-33 (which I assume matches the 33Mhz PCI 
> bus speed), while current drives all refer to ATA-133.  The 
> salesperson's not-very-reassuring comment was that the 133 drives 
> should be backward compatible to 100...and then I started wondering 
> whether he was talking about RAM speeds instead.
> 
> So, as usual, the more I think about PC hardware, the more confused I 
> become.  I used to run Linux on one of my Macs and I'm having trouble 
> remembering why I switched.  Oh, ya...someone gave me a free Intel box! 
>   :-)
> 
> Anyone willing to share some relevant facts?

Phillip,

   Here is the extreme case.

   I have recently installed 40GB hard drive in my Pentium II/350.  The motherboard does not recognize hard drives this size, so I wound up having to get a Promise card.  I had a few hassles with this, but right now, everything works really well.  My only problem is my CDROM based backup.  My directory has not gotten large enough yet to cause problems, but it is only a matter of time.

   I will be putting my installation note up on the web sometime soon. 

-- 
Howard Gibson 
hgibson-MwcKTmeKVNQ at public.gmane.org
howard-42qnO8ePF9cV+D8aMU/kSg at public.gmane.org 
http://home.eol.ca/~hgibson
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