so, this is more like computer hopeless than anything else...
everyone is all judgmental on what I need, and treat the topic like it's taboo, no apparent actual help
I need a good bios update, not criticism
This site exists so members can offer advice and help. You are convinced, for whatever reason, that a BIOS update will fix whatever problem you have. This is reasonable to assume before you research the problem in question.
Either way, I suppose it's your perogative to take the risk of bricking the machine.
On that note, The Alienware m7700 is 'really' a Clevo D900K notebook; whose BIOS files can be found
here. The changelog doesn't show anything about changes to the way it handles Hard drive sizes (assuming you are under the impression that there is some sort of limitation), but that makes sense since all versions of SATA already support 48-bit LBA (which is generally the only software-controllable thing needed), so any BIOS supporting SATA already has 48-bit LBA. Most likely, the limitation is in the actual Hard disk controller hardware, and not something you can change with a BIOS update. (And presumably, such a change would be listed in the BIOS changelog). The drives works via the USB adapter because the USB adapter itself basically acts as the hard disk controller for the drive and "translates" it into a Mass Storage Device, which uses the SCSI transparent command set and thus doesn't really have a size limitation. Connected to the laptop itself, however, it is limited by the OS, HD controller, and the BIOS. the BIOS is probably fine since it already has 48-bit LBA by virtue of having SATA (and that is the only thing that a BIOS needs to support for drives >127GB), the software is fine- since based on the posted chat excerpt you are running windows 7, leaving only the hardware itself (as in the actual hard drive controller circuitry) which of course cannot be changed by a BIOS update.
If you are trying to setup a RAID Array right off the bat, it could be that the RAID controller (or it's software) doesn't support the hard drive size. I don't think that would be the case though, usually the RAID array BIOS replaces the standard BIOS interrupt vectors for HD access, but still delegates the task of actually accessing the disk to those vectors. And if that was the case, the drive would be detected perfectly fine normally, which from what I can tell is not true in your case.
