Where to find 4.3 gig hard drive?

[skyler]

My 5 year old computer crashed. Has Win98 with a 4.3 gig western digital hardrive installed. Having trouble locating a drive with a that size capacity. Any suggestions?
Skyler

[PrntRhd]

You can use larger hard drives than the original.
Post back when you get one (I would suggest 40-80 gig) and the experts here can walk you through how to format the new drive so it will work within the limits of 98.

[Paul Komski]

You could use a larger disk and if the bios doesn't support the bigger disk obtain a pci (or isa) ide controller card that does.

Something like http://www.cablesnmor.com/pci-ultra-card.html orbtained from http://www.google.com/search?q=ide+controller+pci

[jlreich]

You might as well go with something larger. Even if you find a 4.3 HDD it would probably cost just as much as new 40GB HDD. Those old parts tend to be more expensive than newer better ones.

[skyler]

I have an Award Plug & Play BIOS v4.51PG
In the setup the LBA mode is used for the 4.3 gig harddrive.
How would I go about installing a larger drive than the original if the bios doesn't support it? I have win98se. The original hardrive was EISA.
What size would you suggest I install?
Skyler

[Steve]

If you don't want to put to much money into an old computer, you can get a 10-20gig HDD for about $30 here...

http://www.compgeeks.com/products.asp?cat=HDD

[Paleo Pete]

Award Plug & Play BIOS v4.51PG

If I'm not mistaken,...ok hold on...that BIOS has a size limitation of 8.4 or 8.6 GB. My win98 machine with Award 6.00 [I just checked the version] will only handle 8.6, I tried a 20G a few days ago and Maxtor's installation software threatened to install ezbios. Some motherboards with the earlier BIOS versions won't boot at all with an oversize drive connected.

[Marzman]

I've got a Pentium 1 with the 2.0 bios version, it takes a 40Gig maxtor drive but formats it to 7.82, so thats all I can use. I don't know what sort of problems I am going to have when move it to a newer machine but it works fine for now:)

[skyler]

So you can say with certainty an 8.* drive will work with this bios? I'd like to get this machine up and running.

Skyler

[Sylvander]

My 10 GB Samsung HDD is too big for my BIOS to handle, so I've been using "Drive Overlay Software" for about 3 years without any trouble.

My original HDD was a WDC, and their utility software [downloaded for free] tested whether my BIOS could handle the new bigger drive [and found it couldn't].
They also supplied a utility to copy the contents of the old drive to the new.
And also the drive overlay software to facilitate access to the bigger HDD.

The new drive had a higher ATA rating that my PC was incapable of working with, but it hadn't yet been enabled [a supplied software program on a floppy is used to do this] and luckily was set to match the ATA rating that the PC was capable of working with. [Check this on yours]

When I switched the Master slave Jumpers I used the Samsung utilities to replace the WDC drive overlay software with the Samsung version.
The Samsung software warned that it had detected the WDC drive overlay and offered to replace it with their own.

The IDE controller card that Paul suggested is safer and gives other advantages [multiple controllers means you can run multiple drives concurrently], but costs. Drive overlay software is free, and reliable.

[skyler]

Ok, I just found a WD Cavier 24300 EIDE 4 gig on ebay.
However, my old one was the same specs except it was EISA.
Can I use the EIDE in this system?
Thanks,
Skyler

[Paul Komski]

Read about the various Hard Drive Barriers (http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/bios/size.htm) and see some of the solutions into the bargain.

Correct me if I'm wrong but there is, as far as I know, an EISA bus and there are EISA partitions but not EISA HDDs as such. So from the hardware perspective HDDs are broadly either IDE or SCSI. The IDE/ATA/UDMA terms all overlap a bit but all such devices connect to an "IDE" connector on the motherboard, whatever the buses that exist on that board happen to be.

EISA partitions (such as the Dell utility partitions) cant be deleted by windows but can be by third party partition utilities thus rendering the drive as if it was "new" from its maker.

So as long as your board has an IDE connector (which it almost certainly has) any IDE HDD should work fine on it (as long as the BIOS supports its size or one of the size-barrier workarounds is utilised).

[Sylvander]

What I'm reading confirms what you say Paul [I believe].

QUOTE
"A 32-bit bus used in some (but not many) higher performance PC's. The newer PCI bus is better.

Supports many more features than ISA (e.g. more than 2 busmasters & switchless configuration).
A burst mode provides double the transfer rate.
Runs at 8.33 MHz.
Theoretical maximum transfer speed is 33 MB/s."

[skyler]

I found a print out of the system. The primary bus master has an IDE controller, Intel 82371AB PCI Bus Master IDE Controller. System bus is ISA. The used drives on ebay state they are EIDE. Will they work?
Skyler

[Steve]

Yes. I have yet to see a case where an EIDE HDD would not work on a Pentium system with an IDE controller. I would still recommend a 10gig or greater HDD. Just so you could take advantage of the full 8.6gig capability.

[skyler]

Thanks for all your help. I purchased one on ebay for $23 including S&H.
Now I hope it works.
skyler