HI ALL, I was looking to add a second HDD (250GB) to my pretty old Dell Dimension 4100 system but was wondering if the off the shelf HDDs (Maxtor, Seagate etc ...) will fit into the available spaces in the case. Also will Win XP with SP2 be able to see all 250 MB without any problems ? Thx.
XP with SP2 should be able to see it all ok. I don't have the time to find the specs of a Dimension 4100, but as long as it has SATA (if you buy a SATA HDD) then you should be ok.
yeah, it'll fit (i would get a Seagate) but you may not be able to see the full 250Gb (due to possible restrictions of your mobo's BIOS) BTW: what OS does this system have, & some of it's specs wouldn't hurt
Well, it uses the i815e chipset, which means it's probably paired with the ICH2 southbridge. I'm trying to find out if it natively supports the 48-bit LBA addressing or not. I *think* it does, but I'm picking through some PDF's on Intel's website. If, for some reason, you don't have native support for drives over 137GB, you can purchase an IDE or SATA controller card to plug the drive into. This would get around the hardware limitation. You're already set with XP SP2 since the software support has been there since SP1, and Service Packs are cumulative.
Thx guys, so i suppose the only way to be 100% sure is to connect the new HDD and see. If for some reasom the BIOS can't see the full 250 G can the BIOS be changed ? and how ?
yes it can be changed, but its not a good idea, changing the BIOS is called "flashing the BIOS" but it is NOT recommended, as you could very easily turn your motherboard into an expesive paperweight (dead) the best way to do it is to add a PCI HD controller, and connect the new HDD to the card, like this or you could get a SATA RAID one like this
And if you are still dare to do this then make sure that u read all the updates that BIOS gonna do on ur system... Otherwise as Dave said It is not recommended because a small mistake while doing this will kill the whole mobo...
