I use windows xp professional, and have multiple "removable" drives, including a firewire external 200 gb western digital drive. My bios, (and probably yours), determines the size of 'internal' drives, (mine is 120 gb), but seems to have no bearing on external drives. I have 2 120 gb external USB 2 drives, and the above mentioned 200 gb firewire drive. While the 'specs' say the USB 2 drives should be 'faster', they aren't. I'm very satisfied with the performance of all of my external drives, all function well for video capture/rendering.

JTH

Ah-ha! So it wasn't just the pizza.

I too tried looking on the MS-site and, as you say, got lost and tumbled down the muddy river in no time flat. Also looked here, but couldn't find the details I was thinking of.

Yep, I'm using WinXP-Home. Good to know that external HD-sizes may not be affected. Was curious to know if the BIOS-thing is related to ANY drive, or just the one(s) that it came with initially. What age are your pc's, guys? Supposedly the ones less than 3-4 months old don't have an upper-limit.

Thanks!

I don't believe you'll find any limitations, practical ones at least, within winxp pro. [wouldn't be much of a market for big drives if there was] Your system bios may not see the full drive (usually the case when you have a problem), & in that case you can *try* the utilities that ship with most drives & fool the bios so to speak. However, these load on boot and have been known to cause various problems so research them if that's your solution.

Another solution might be to use an ide card. The promise version Maxtor sells for instance shows up in windows (all versions) as an scsi device, has it's own bios, and as far as I know, has no limitations what so ever.

mike

Could we use a RAID card if our MB supports it? It seems I heard that you could use as a big a hard drive you want if you have RAID capability.

Wow, is this Internet thing great, or what? I went to Google, typed in "bios" "hard drive size" and was immediately directed to the site http://www.serverwatch.com/tutorials/article.php/1489651, which said that recent bios distributions have something called "interrupt 13 extensions", which make the new hard limit about 9 terabytes, or about 45 times the size of a 200GB drive.

Regarding RAID: I saw somewhere that it's not necessarily a good idea when it comes to DV. Something to do with dropped frames.

Finally, the PC Magazine I just read tonight implied that Firewire is probably a better connection method than USB2 for external hard drives.

I'm not sure where i read this, but i recall seeing somewhere that many computers until very recently have a bios limitation of about 135GB. Newer computers won't have this limitation. If you do have a computer with the 135MB limit it's still not a huge problem as you can partition larger drives. Splitting a 250GB drive into two 125GB partitions will work fine.

If you do have this limitation, contact your motherboard manufacturer to check for a bios update.

riredale:
"Finally, the PC Magazine I just read tonight implied that Firewire is probably a better connection method than USB2 for external hard drives."


I'm not sure about this info but somebody told me one day that Win2K simply DOESN'T like USB. Urban legend ? I couldn't tell...
Anyway, I've been using FireWire with Win2K and no problems so far !

Yeah, Kelly, that was the article I was thinking of!

I get the impression that the 'older' BIOS-types don't care what the total storage-size is (ie, you can add as many drives as you want), but that they don't recognize any one particular drive partition over a certain size, true?

Thanks!

BIOS limits are a always a major mystery. Let me see if I can help. BIOS controls all disk access during boot. Windows 98/ME, 2K, and XP control disk access once they are up and running. So, if you have an "industry standard" BIOS dated no later than 1998, you should only have one BIOS related concern. Some post 1998 BIOS' will have an 8 Gig limit - but this limit only has meaning until the OS is up and running.

So, from a BIOS perspective, the only thing you need to be concerned with is a possible need to limit your primary (boot) partition to 8 Gigs. Considering the processing demands of VV, I think that is unlikely that very many VV users are using 1998 motherboards. For this group, the limitations casused by older system BIOS' should be pretty much a non-issue.

Partition limits still exist, but they are functions of the specfic OS, not the system BIOS.

JackHughs

Hi Jack (better not say that in an airport) -

Thanks for a very clear and easy-to-understand of the concept. I now understand the principles all a lot better, and am reassured to hear the BIOS issue shouldn't be a major factor for me.

Which I'm sure means WD/Maxtor and CompUSA are also happy for your explanation too, because I'm out the door to the store!

Thanks again, everyone.

I just pulled this off of the Western Digital support site:

Question: I am not getting the full size of my greater than 137GB drive. Does my PC support drives greater than 137GB?

Their answer: Whether or not a given system can support 48-bit addressing (drives over 137GB) is dependent upon several factors. The operating system must support the higher capacities. Windows 98 and higher will support the drives at the operating system level. However, since motherboards and BIOSs vary widely, the answer is not as simple as making sure your operating system will support the drive.

The motherboard BIOS, the EIDE controller, and the EIDE controller drivers you are using within your operating system must support the drives as well. It is best to contact your motherboard manufacturer to determine if your motherboard, BIOS, and EIDE controller drivers support drives over 137GB.

Another possibility is the use of an add-on EIDE controller that supports 48-bit addressing. Even with such a controller, you must still make sure that your operating system and device drivers for the controller will support the larger drive size.


dave

The equipment makers seem to take extraordinary delight in making simple things complex. The 137 (128 for the accurate) gig limit is a result of 28 bit ATA (IDE) addressing. 28 bits allows for 268, 435, 455 individual addresses. At 512 bytes per sector, the partition limit is 137, 438, 953, 472 bytes.

The very latest ATA spec provides for 48 bit addressing but, to the best of my knowledge, 48 bit Logical Block Addressing (LBA) is only implemented in Windows XP SP1. The big hard drive makers deal with this by packaging proprietary software to implement 48 bit LBA on other Operating Systems. Assuming nothing older than Windows 98 SE and a recent name-brand motherboard, the drive maker's software should work just fine for a 200 gig (advertised) hard drive.

Here's the simple part. The 128 gig limit is per partition - not per physical drive.

For the same 200 gig advertised/186 gig actual physical drive, I believe the worse case scenario ( again assuming nothing older than Windows 98 SE and a recent name-brand motherboard) would require the purchaser to use Partition Magic to create three 62 gig logical drives.

JackHughs

It's too bad though, that you just can't use the whole drive and have a ,say, 160GB partition. I know it's no big deal, except it's one less drive letter for me to deal with <g>.

dave

Controller cards or onboard controllers act like SCSI devices and load their own bios after the motherboard's bios and can be programmed to handle what the motherboard eprom often cannot. In those cases the motherboard bios will show no hard drive. They show up when the bios for the controller loads and are also also configurable at that point in the boot process.

The solution is a controller card which is not expensive and can be configured optionally but not necessarily as Raid if you want to experiment.....unless your PCI bus is maxed out.

Jack is one the right track here.

We have been testing the 200GB WD 48-bit LBA drives at work on various platforms and IDE controllers. The 200GB drive from WD we are testing is UATA133 instead of UATA100 like your 120GB drive, but it is backwards compatible.

As for size, yes, it is tricky. 128GB (based on 1024 Bytes per KB) or 137GB (based on 1000 bytes per KB) is the native size limit per drive (not partition) in all Windows operating systems except Windows .NET. However, as long as you have SP1 for XP (SP3 for 2000) and an appropriate driver for your IDE controller to support 48-bit LBA drives, you should be able to see the whole 200GB drive as one 195GB partition. There is also a registry hack if your IDE controller vendor does not have an updated driver.

Also, go here for information on how to install your drive. It's for Intel boards, but will work for other IDE controllers as well. You just have to use the updated driver for your IDE controller if it's not Intel.

Also go here for a Microsoft KnowledgeBase article on enabling 48-bit LBA in Windows XP.

Just remeber you most likely will need a supported driver for your IDE controller as well.

I am now more confused than before. Are you guys saying that there is a built-in size limitation in all Windows products?

Then why is it that, when I downloaded and installed an updated BIOS for my Gigabyte GA7-ZX1 motherboard last fall, the notes stated that, among other improvements, this version also "...removed 137GB HD limitation...?"

What they are saying is that there are workarounds to allow more than is native. There are, in fact, many things to consider, and they all have to be working properly to overcome those limitations.

That said, the simple solution is to take your computer into some place like CompUSA, buy your huge hard drive and possibly a controller card there on the condition that they install it there for free (normal) AND the condition that it comes up as FULL SIZE or the types and sizes of partitions you want.

If they KNOW they can't, you don't end up buying. If you buy on that understanding and they fail, you get your money back. Do it all the time.

The subject of limits is very confusing. The key is to understand that the various limits are "caused" by different addressing techniques used by the "components" of a computer system. By "components", I mean the BIOS, the OS, the ATA/IDE Interface, and the design of certain file types (.avi for example). Additional confusion arises from the fact that some limits are related to the maximum size of logical drive that can be "seen" and some relate to the maximum file size that can be created.

The bright spot is that the era of limits is just about over. If you can afford to upgrade to a new P4 system using Windows XP SP1 and ATA133 drives, you're home free. I'm just about to do this myself.

For those that can't afford the hardware, the following are the most important limits:

FAT 32 - 4 gig file size. Chuck Windows 98 in favor of Windows 2000 or XP and the NTFS file management system.

ATA/IDE interface - ATA33, 66, and 100 use 28 bit addressing - you have to live with 128 gig logical drive limits.

BIOS - Any motherboard that supports ATA33 will (actually should) support 28 bit LBA - the ATA/IDE interface remains the limiting factor.

Files - standard .avi is limited to 4 gig files - use OpenDML.

There is also a whole list of other limits applicable to older systems. I don't think it is practical to run VV on these systems so I don't believe that anyone here has to worry about those limits.

I think that's it, but there are folks on this forum that know a whole lot more about these things than I do. I welcome any corrections.

JackHughs

Jack, I thank you for the complete breakdown. It has answered some of my questions.
dave