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My pc will only take an 8 GB hard drive. I was told by HP that I could use a pci controller to use bigger hard drives, so I bought one and now I'm at a loss what to do with it. After installing the controller and connecting my hard drive I can't get my pc to boot up. I would greatly appreciate any help in this matter.
Do you have any instructions? That could be hjelpful. Check the manufacturer's web site, as you haven't even told us who made it.
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Who told you you could only go up to an 8GB HDD? This must be an awfully old machine! If that's the case, your 192MB RAM amount far exceeds the cacheability limit of the chipset...& you should be running Win98SE, not WinXP. A BIOS update or overlay software should have allowed you to bypass the 8.4GB limit. The benefit of the controller card is that you'll be able to run an ATA100 HDD. Carefully read the manual & make sure you use an 80-wire IDE cable.
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You should install the controller, and leave your hard drive attached to the motherboard. Boot into Windows, and install the drivers when prompted. Then shut down, and attach the hard drive to the controller card. It should work normally.
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I have an HP vectra ve c\333 series 7. if that helps determine how old my pc is. An HP suppuort tech told me the bios supports approx. 4GB but will read up to 8GB. If I want to go with a bigger HDD then I should try a pci ide controller. I bought my controler on ebay it is a "Silicon Image Ultra ATA /133 Sotware Raid IDE controller".
If this info would help anyone tell me what I can do I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks
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Most "techies" that take calls aren't techies at all, they're just kids working for minimum wage reading the info off the screen in front of them...few of them actually "know" PC hardware.
The Vectra VE C/333 Series 7 came with HDDs up to 4.3GB but could accept HDDs up to 8.4GB. The 8.4GB is a motherboard BIOS limitation & I doubt there's a BIOS update available. Another thing you should know is your board can only transfer data at ATA33 (33MB/s) with the onboard controller.
You can actually install any size HDD you want on an old machine like that & you don't need a PCI controller card to do it, all you need is the software that comes with the new HDD...or if you don't have the software, it's available for free download at the HDD manufacturer's website. If you would have used the software to setup your drive, it would have installed an "overlay" program that would have bypassed the 8.4GB limit. The downside to this is you can't take advantage of the of the ATA100 or ATA133 transfer rates of newer HDDs.
All I can suggest to you now is to carefully read the manual that came with your card. Sounds like you bought more of a card than you really needed. Hopefully you didn't pay much...a basic controller card goes for about $15. Everything you need to know about your card can be found here:
http://www.siimage.com/products/product.aspx?id=31&ptid=1
User guide is here:
http://www.siimage.com/support/supportsearchresults.aspx?pid=31&cid=27&ctid=1&osid=4&
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Jam, Thanks SOOOOOOO much you were very helpful. I may copy and paste your post for further reference. Although I did buy a 40GB HDD about 2 years ago and I'm sure It did'nt come with any sotware. Next time I will try the website. Once again thank you.
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