Dang 48Bit LBA

[Will Rickards]

So my brothers dell dimension L800CXE (Intel 810 chipset, 82801AA ICH controller) was getting low on space. Considering it had a 20GB drive in it, I wouldn't doubt it. It originally had Win ME on it but sometime ago he installed XP Pro. He had SP2. I added the EnableBigLba key in the registry anyway. Why, because he wanted me to install a 200GB drive. No problem I thought. I read the maxtor thing and it said I need intel's application accelerator. So I downloaded that too. Then I shutdown the pc, hooked both drives up, and ghosted the one to the other. At this point I discovered he had a FAT system instead of NTFS. Which I thought was weird for XP Pro but whatever.
And it seemed to work. Reading from the drive seems fine. Writing to it seems fine at first but any significant transfer cause the computer to lockup. At first the screen just freezes but numlock responds. But then it stops responding.

His bios does NOT see the correct size of the drive but there are no updates and the intel site said it didn't matter because it was windows XP. All the low level checks seem to come back fine, chkdsk, maxtor's powermax.

So I uninstalled the intel application accelerator. Same problem still.
Not sure what to do. I checked for windows updates and found none that were critical.

I gave up on it for tonight. I think I'm going to try copying from the old drive again with maxtor's software instead of ghost. Maybe that will work better. If that doesn't work I'm going to try the size limiting jumper.

Is there a good 48 bit LBA support reference around I should be reading.
You see I have a 160GB drive I have to install in an older computer as well next week.

 

[Mercutio]

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;303013

 

[Will Rickards]

So if the bios doesn't handle 48 Bit LBA, it won't work.
Despite what intel says about the 810 chipset?

Seems weird though as it shouldn't have been accessing past 137GB to do anything. So why the lockups?

 

[mubs]

So if the bios doesn't handle 48 Bit LBA, it won't work.

Yes. Cheapest workaround: stick in a PCI controller that doesn't have this limitation - typically brokenPromise.

 

[Mercutio]

I have several sitting around if you need one.

 

[Will Rickards]

I think I have one around... not sure if I threw it out or not...
It is just that his PCI slots are full, I'll just toss the modem card out as he doesn't need that anymore.
Lesson learned I guess, never trust the intel docs.
I thought maybe ghost had screwed up the partition table or the FAT and that was screwing it up. I was going to try maxblast to copy the data and see how that went. But I don't want to be bothered screwing with it anymore, I'll just install the PCI controller card.

 

[Will Rickards]

Well I found the one I had laying around.
But it looks like I need another one for my dad's computer, unless you guys can verify the VIA 686B southbridge supports 48Bit LBA. I can't seem to find a definitive source that says one way or the other.

So merc, what kind have you got and how much to ship it to me pretty quick?
You can PM me if you want with the info.
otherwise I'll just get the syba card with the silicon image chipset from newegg that is 14.99 and be paying about $5 for shipping.

 

[Mercutio]

IIRC the 686B was used on KT133 - KT333 or so Via boards and does not support drives larger than 120GB.

I've got a Promise Ultra/100 or five that I'm not using. I can probably UPS one out to you tomorrow. I don't know how much it'll cost though.

 

[Will Rickards]

I'll continue this discussion on PM.

 

[mubs]

So if the bios doesn't handle 48 Bit LBA, it won't work.
Despite what intel says about the 810 chipset?

Intel's usually not wrong about issues like this, so I'd make sure of the problem before going off on a tangent.

 

[Will Rickards]

Well I know the BIOS doesn't see it correctly.
And it is the latest bios.

 

[Mercutio]

i810 is old enough that I wouldn't expect it to support LBA regardless. I don't know if it does or not, but come on, it's been around since, what? 1999?

 

[Will Rickards]

I suppose I should link to the intel site doc that I was referring to earlier. Also here is the document on installing a large drive. And here is a test program to determine if your bios supports 48bit LBA.

 

[Will Rickards]

So for everybody's edification, my dad's computer a Gigabyte GA-7DX revision 4.3, with southbridge VT82C686B did not see the whole drive only 137GB. I didn't see what BIOS revision it had but I didn't want to mess with that. So I had to use the syba card with the silicon image 0680 to support the larger drive. But so far no problems.

Latter today I'll use the maxtor card merc sent in my brother's computer. Wish me luck.

 

[Will Rickards]

Maxtor card worked well in my bro's PC, thanks Merc.

The transfer went SLOW as in 3-4 hours. I transfered using maxtor's software with the old drive hooked up to the onboard controller and the new drive hooked up to the add-in card. Windows seems to be fine. I suspect if I'd have used ghost or something else it would have gone faster.