Computer Problems? Computing.Net has over 1,000,000 posts about all things technology related! Over 90% answered within 24 hours! Click here to start participating now! Also, be sure to check out the New User Guide.
larger hard drive
Name: Brian Date: July 22, 2002 at 11:57:13 Pacific
Comment:
have 200k hard drive running win 3.1, thinking of installing a drive larger than 540k need to know what dictates the size that I can use. will win 95 original version help.
Name: dude Date: July 22, 2002 at 12:13:57 Pacific
Reply:
On older machines the Bios can't handle large drives. Also win95 use fat16 which limits drive size to 2gig. If you stay with small drives under 2 gig, you should be ok.
0
Response Number 2
Name: bvoss Date: July 22, 2002 at 12:28:07 Pacific
Reply:
Dude If I change to win 95 and hd under 2gig will I still need to do some thing to the bios. all I want is to use the internet on a very limited basis. would I be better off just adding another small drive
0
Response Number 3
Name: DAVEINCAPS Date: July 22, 2002 at 15:48:45 Pacific
Reply:
Computers through 486 had a bios limitation of 1024 cylinders on a hard drive. This amounted to a max HD size of 540 meg or so. Some of the later 486's would recognize larger drives but most didn't. Some of the earlier pentiums had this limitation also. Without more info about your machine there's no way to know if you bios will recognize a larger drive.
You can always use a drive overlay to compensate for a bios that doesn't see a larger drive.
DOS and up through the first 2 versions of win95 used FAT16 partitioning which had a maximum of 2 gig. Higher versions of windows allowed FAT32 partitions which allowed larger sized partitions
Summary: I find it rather strange that Dell techs didn't suggest you upgrade the BIOS so it would support larger hard drives, CD booting etc. Disk overlays are fine but almost a last resort, if BIOS flash isn'...
Summary: If there is anyone who has used the PCMCIA/Kanguru external hard drive to off-load their current hard drive to, please let let me what you did to make it work. The object of this effort is to upgrade ...
Summary: The system will not see the new drive on it's own , you will need to perform "Fdisk" to partition the drive . This is a largeer than normal drive for 98SE, and you will have to make several partition...
0 
