I have an old IBM Aptiva which I would like to upgrade. I recently got hold of a Maxtor 200gb s-ata hd (model 6L200R0). IBM support site says that this computer only can handle hd's up to 127gb, but the page is old (2003) and I'm not sure that the info is up-to-date. Do you think that the drive will work? Can I ruin anything if I try to install the drive? Thanks in advance, Anders, Lofoten, Norway

The BIOS MUST support 48LBA: http://www.48bitlba.com/ Also would be surprised if a P3 450 could support even an 80GB Hard drive

This is an old board without LBA enaled, that's what limits it to 127Gb. You should be able to fix this by upgrading your BIOS. Try this link for some flash BIOS downloads http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/s... Hope this helps I don't know what to write here

"This is an old board without LBA enaled, that's what limits it to 127Gb" WRONG: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logica... The BIOS and chipset may also have limitations, and your link points to a Intel 810e chipset, it feasibly could be a Intel 810 chipset on the Aptiva.

i do not know if it will work but i can tell you that it will not damage anything by connecting the hard disc and trying it. Updating the BIOS can be risky - the mobo can become scrap it it goes wrong (eg. power problem during the update) or it is the wrong bios file for that exact make/model of mobo. only update the bios if you have definite confirmation that the new bios file is the right one and that it says it will do what you need it to do.

If this IBM computer is the one with the specs in your original post: Pentium II 450 / 384mb Aptiva 2163-582 Then there is no support for it on the IBM / Lenovo sites. It cannot possibly support hard drives larger than 128gb (137gb manufacturer's size) because it's chipset cannot support that. Files for this model 2163 can be obtained from a mirror that is a copy of the old IBM FTP web site. Go here: http://greyghost.dyndns.org/pccbbs/... 00n4020.pdf 5767480 04-19-99 Hardware Maintenance Manual for Aptiva 2158, 2163, and 2164 systems. (Newer; lots of info in it) 2158-63.pdf 5242154 01-29-99 29-99 Hardware Maintenance Manual for Aptiva 2158 and 2163 models. (Older) 2158post.pdf 441519 07-02-99 Setup Poster (US English) for 2158, 2163, and 2164 Aptiva systems. 2158ref.pdf 1449181 07-02-99 Reference Guide (US English) for 2158, 2163, and 2164 model Aptiva systems. (generic and rather useless) 6672wa.pdf 138849 12-03-98 Warranty and Software License Agreement (US and Canada) for Aptiva 2158 and 2163 systems. dsk4w32.exe 89600 01-08-99 Utility for creating 2158/2163 diagnostics diskette essupus.exe 912806 02-12-99 Updated ESS audio drivers (version 4.05.00.1092) for Aptiva 2158 and 2163 rvflsh.exe 896844 01-20-99 Riva video BIOS update for Aptiva 2163 systems ...... If that bios update is based on Award bios code, it probably cannot support the recognition of hard drives larger than 32gb because of bugs in the bios code. The mboard has no onboard SATA controller. ........ In any case: If you can set the bios Setup to boot from a SCSI controller or similar, you could get yourself a PCI SATA hard drive controller card and connect the 200gb SATA drive to that. They are inexpensive these days and will support 48 bit LBA and any hard drive size. If you want to boot Windows from the SATA drive, you must load the drivers for the SATA controller at the beginning of Windows Setup when you see "Press F6 to load drivers for SCSI controllers" or similar. However, I have determined by installing a recent hard drive controller card on several old mboards that the hard drive cannot run any faster that the mboard chipset will let it, despite the superior capabilities of the card. E.g. if the mboard chipset cannot support higher than UDMA 33 or 66, the hard drive connected to the card cannot run any faster than that on that mboard. ***********************************************************************

Thank you for all your replies. I guess I will try to sell the disk instead of installing it, and then maybe buy a new computer. Thanks, everyone! Anders