Computer Hope
Other => Other => Topic started by: Mahesh on April 08, 2004, 10:40:01 PM
-
I wanted to add a second hard drive for my Pentium 3 computer. I wanted to know upto what GB does pentium 3 support. I was thinking of buying 160GB. Does Pentium 3 support it?
Thank you :-/
-
There's no problem with the CPU, but the motherboard won't likely support anything over 137gb. That's why a lot of these large hard drives come with a free IDE PCI Adapter Card.
-
Actually, I just added a 200 GB Seagate HD (on sale for $99 ;D) to a 400 MHz P2; it worked fine! Mine came with all sorts of tips though (but no controller card), and I'm sure you could find some option that will work. Also, make sure your OS can support it (Linux can...and yes, at least half of my posts are going to mention Linux); I believe only XP and 2000 natively support giant hard drives, but even if you have one of those, you may still have problems. Sadly, determining compatiblity isn't as easy as knowing your processor. This page may help:
http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/faq/137_overview.html
BTW, you could just buy a controller card; that would work (with XP or 2000 only though probably), but why waste money if you don't have to? Check out the above page, and try a google search.
Good luck!
edited to add specs
-
Windows or Linux will recognize the full, unpartitioned capacity of drives larger than 137GB only if the motherboard's BIOS has support for 48-bit LBA for the IDE channels. To get around this limitation on older hardware, you could partition the drive. All of the space will be recognized so long as no partitions exceed 137GB.