Hard disk question

[luismxc]

Can i use an 4.3 GB udma hard disk, on my primitive pentium 166 MHz. Is there any problem??

[Jeniva]

you should be able to use it..however the bios may not support it..on my old p166 i had to partition my 6.4 gb hdd into smaller drives to see all of it...I cant remember what bios it was or what size i had to partition the hdd to....but..yea..it should work

[thefly]

on track might help if the bios doesn't see the drive.

[wdouglas]

I have a Quantum Fireball 4.3Gb UDMA (ATA30 I think) in my old and even more primitive P100. It did work okay and did recognise the whole size of the drive after I've partitioned with large disk support in FDISK and installed Windows 98SE from scratch. I don't think I was hitting full speed however as I don't think my motherboard or cables supported Ultra ATA.

I found it also worked when added on as a spare drive in my new PC but again probably was hitting full speed as although my new mobo support ATA100, I had to use a cable from the old PC mentioed above. Certainly it was a LOT slower than my shiny new twin 40GB ATA 100 IBM drives....

One thing to bear in mind it depends on what transfer rates your motherboard and cables are capable of. If your motherboard and cables don't support the Ultra ATA speed of your drive it should work but not at full speed. The cables and mobo are the limiting factors. Check your mobo manual to see if it supports the standards and maybe purchase Ultra ATA 100/66 cables to make surer these are up to scratch otherwise it may not transfer at the rate you'd hoped.

Hope this helps,

Will.