Upgrade Report [Hardware Tips: Plan for Your Big Hard Drive - 05/10/2005]

May 10th, 2005

Hardware Tips: Plan for Your Big Hard Drive

by Contributing Editor Kirk Steers

If your multimegabyte music, picture, and video files have your
current hard drive bursting at the seams, it may be time to upgrade.
Today, high-capacity hard drives are more convenient than DVD drives,
and they have become amazingly affordable--a 200GB drive can now cost
less than $100. Hard drives are a breeze to install, with a few minor
caveats. Here are some important things to consider before you pop
your PC's hood.

To use a hard drive larger than 137GB, your computer's operating
system and BIOS must support 48-bit logical block addressing (LBA).
This refers to the number of sectors that a PC can recognize on a hard
drive. The 24-bit addressing used by older hardware and OSs limits the
amount of data they can recognize on a single hard disk to 137GB.

If your PC is more than two years old, its BIOS may not support 48-bit
addressing. Consult your user manual, or contact your computer
manufacturer to determine whether the system needs a BIOS upgrade.

David Marcionek's $10 downloadable HDINFO utility tells you whether
your BIOS can handle big hard drives:
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/455374/15377828/971435/0/

Marcionek's site is filled with useful information about how to add a
large hard drive to your PC.

Drive Considerations

If your PC's BIOS doesn't support big drives, you have a number of
options.

Update your BIOS: Check the vendor's Web site for BIOS updates. If you
find one, follow installation instructions to the letter. A BIOS is a
terrible thing to trash.

Use the Drive's DDO Utility: Most big hard drives come with a Dynamic
Drive Overlay program (Seagate's DiscWizard and Maxtor's MaxBlast are
examples) that performs the needed initialization by augmenting the
BIOS code.

Add a SATA Adapter: The easiest but most expensive way to bypass your
PC's BIOS limitations is to install an adapter that supports
large-capacity drives. The Serial ATA RAID 1210SA card from Adaptec
accommodates two Serial ATA hard drives; our Product Finder has specs
and pricing:
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/455374/15377828/971436/0/

Drives larger than 137GB also require an OS that supports 48-bit
addressing. Windows XP with Service Pack 1 or later and Windows 2000
with Service Pack 3 or later both qualify. With 2000, though, you may
have to alter a Windows Registry setting. Download a copy of David
Marcionek's EnableBigLba:
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/455374/15377828/971437/0/

Run the program to determine whether you need to change the Registry,
and how to do it.

If your PC runs Windows 98 or Me and uses an Intel 8xx-series chip
set, you may be able to use a big drive by installing the free Intel
Application Accelerator (IAA) utility, which replaces the ATA drivers
in those OSs with updated versions that support big hard drives. At
Intel's site you can download IAA and Intel's free Chipset
Identification Utility, and view a list of the chip sets IAA supports.
You can also get the programs from us.

Chipset Identification Utility:
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/455374/15377828/971438/0/

Intel Application Accelerator:
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/455374/15377828/756251/0/

If you have to buy a new adapter, consider a SATA card such as the
Adaptec model I cited previously; you'll have to get a SATA drive, but
it will be faster than its parallel ATA counterpart and easier to
install. You can also reuse the drive in your next PC. (Note that a
drive with a large buffer will speed up the transfer of big files.)
For our reviews of massive drives from last March, see "Monster-Size
Storage":
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/455374/15377828/971439/0/

For instructions on installing a SATA drive, see Stan Miastkowski's
September 2003 "Step-By-Step":
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/455374/15377828/971440/0/

Send your tips and questions to:
kirk_steers at pcworld.com

Read Kirk Steers' regularly published "Hardware Tips" columns:
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/455374/15377828/364751/0/


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"Until last October, Christ had a very limited involvement in my life. I believed in God; I just never had to prove I believed. Belief is an absence of proof."
-- Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling