Hard Drive Question
Thread Starter
Joined: Dec 2002
Posts: 513
Likes: 31
From: Dorset,UK
Hard Drive Question
I want to upgrade the size of hard drive in my PC but I am not sure how big I can go.
The mother board is a Mercury BXe98-ATX with a Pentium 3 500Mhz processor and 384mb memory. The current hard drive is a Fujitsu MPE3102AT (10Gb) with Windows ME installed.
The manual I have gives no indication of hard drive type or max size the board will run. I have looked on the web but with no luck.
I would like to fit an 80Gb or 120Gb drive as a slave to accomodate large files (photos) and keep the 10Gb drive to run the OS.
I would appreciate any advice you specialists out there can give me.
Thanks in advance.
CC
The mother board is a Mercury BXe98-ATX with a Pentium 3 500Mhz processor and 384mb memory. The current hard drive is a Fujitsu MPE3102AT (10Gb) with Windows ME installed.
The manual I have gives no indication of hard drive type or max size the board will run. I have looked on the web but with no luck.
I would like to fit an 80Gb or 120Gb drive as a slave to accomodate large files (photos) and keep the 10Gb drive to run the OS.
I would appreciate any advice you specialists out there can give me.
Thanks in advance.
CC
Thread Starter
Joined: Dec 2002
Posts: 513
Likes: 31
From: Dorset,UK
Engineer
Thanks for that, but perhaps I have posed my question badly.
1) Will my motherboard support a hard drive of 80 - 120 Gb?
2) If so what type of drive should I get?
I have been told that there are different types of hard drive. E.G. UDMA 100, UDMA 133, SATA 100, 5400/7200RPM. Also which manufacturer is recommended for best value.
As Engineer said, I should upgrade to Windows XP as well, since it is about half price if you buy an OEM version!
CC
Thanks for that, but perhaps I have posed my question badly.
1) Will my motherboard support a hard drive of 80 - 120 Gb?
2) If so what type of drive should I get?
I have been told that there are different types of hard drive. E.G. UDMA 100, UDMA 133, SATA 100, 5400/7200RPM. Also which manufacturer is recommended for best value.
As Engineer said, I should upgrade to Windows XP as well, since it is about half price if you buy an OEM version!
CC
Administrator
Joined: Mar 2001
Aviation Qualifications: PPL
Posts: 8,121
Likes: 686
From: Twickenham, home of rugby
CC,
I had the opportunity of upgrading a range of Compaq PCs with 10 GB disks in the PIII 450-600 MHz range, so probably of the same vintage as yours.
I found that 60 GB was the largest drive that could be accomodated by the systems.
While not saying that you can't fit a drive larger than these (especially if you can update the BIOS to a recent version), I would be cautious about > 60, though 80 might not be a problem.
I left the original 10 GB disk in as the system disk and added a 40 or 60 GB disk as the Data disk - obviously you need to have space, power, connections sufficient to do this.
An alternative would be to add a SCSI card and then you are no longer limited by the IDE restrictions.
As regards the type of drive, you can use any drive that supports an IDE interface. The speed of the interface will be limited by what your PC supports, not what the drive is capable of. That said, the faster the drive spins the lower the seek time, so you may as well go for a drive with a high rpm.
There's some useful info on interfaces here
HTH
SD
I had the opportunity of upgrading a range of Compaq PCs with 10 GB disks in the PIII 450-600 MHz range, so probably of the same vintage as yours.
I found that 60 GB was the largest drive that could be accomodated by the systems.
While not saying that you can't fit a drive larger than these (especially if you can update the BIOS to a recent version), I would be cautious about > 60, though 80 might not be a problem.
I left the original 10 GB disk in as the system disk and added a 40 or 60 GB disk as the Data disk - obviously you need to have space, power, connections sufficient to do this.
An alternative would be to add a SCSI card and then you are no longer limited by the IDE restrictions.
As regards the type of drive, you can use any drive that supports an IDE interface. The speed of the interface will be limited by what your PC supports, not what the drive is capable of. That said, the faster the drive spins the lower the seek time, so you may as well go for a drive with a high rpm.
There's some useful info on interfaces here
HTH
SD
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 903
Likes: 0
From: Home
SD
Think I have seen this prob before but on a compaq laptop tried to install a 20G HDD system would not see it Problem was with an out dated BIOS once upgraded bingo system worked a treat
CC
Looked on the web for the MB you showed cant find Mercury version only a ZIDE version maybe you could look at the web sites on that.
2 types of drive in use 2day ATA or SATA one uses parallel the other serial data transfer
Think I have seen this prob before but on a compaq laptop tried to install a 20G HDD system would not see it Problem was with an out dated BIOS once upgraded bingo system worked a treat
CC
Looked on the web for the MB you showed cant find Mercury version only a ZIDE version maybe you could look at the web sites on that.
2 types of drive in use 2day ATA or SATA one uses parallel the other serial data transfer
The Oracle
Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 2,902
Likes: 0
From: Naples, Florida U.S.A.
Compass Call,
Your motherboard might handle an 80 to 120Gb drive with the Lastest BIOS and if not, then get a PCI IDE Controller Card for the Hard Drive.
Take Care.
Rochard
Your motherboard might handle an 80 to 120Gb drive with the Lastest BIOS and if not, then get a PCI IDE Controller Card for the Hard Drive.
Take Care.
Rochard
Plastic PPRuNer
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 1,902
Likes: 0
From: Rochechouart, France
"Upgrade to Win XP will solve all your problems"....
Any version of XP will run like a dog on an old system like this - "..Pentium 3 500Mhz processor and 384mb memory.." - no matter how much memory you have. Don't.
If you're happy with the system and just need more storage space just put in a 40-60GB drive as slave - with this mobo you won't notice much difference between 7200 and 5400 rpm.
Any version of XP will run like a dog on an old system like this - "..Pentium 3 500Mhz processor and 384mb memory.." - no matter how much memory you have. Don't.
If you're happy with the system and just need more storage space just put in a 40-60GB drive as slave - with this mobo you won't notice much difference between 7200 and 5400 rpm.
Joined: Feb 2004
Posts: 87
Likes: 0
From: RSA and Surrey, UK
Once you have more than one IDE drive you can increase the Virtual Memory (Page File) on both disks to increase the overall speed of the PC - takes 2 minutes and works wonders.
RAID isn't supported natively by XP and even Server 2003 only allows for 0, 1 and 5.
PSP
RAID isn't supported natively by XP and even Server 2003 only allows for 0, 1 and 5.
PSP
