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hard disk compatibility?

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by ken_marq2001

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somebody tell me that there is a hard disk compatibility constaraints, but in my experience i have not encountered one. is there really compatibility constaraints in hard disk?

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by thechas

Yes there are HDD compatibility issues and constraints.

While less of a problem than it used to be, often, different brands of hard drives will not work well when connected to the same IDE cable.
This used to be a big problem with Maxtor drives unless the Maxtor was the master drive.

BIOS / IDE controller limits.
Many motherboards have a limit as to how large of a hard drive they will detect.

File system issues:
FAT16 is limited to 2GB per logical drive.

FAT32 is limited to 64GB with the original FDISK from W98 / Me.
And, 137GB with the new version of FDISK from Microsoft.

Prior to XP SP1, and Windows 2000 SP3(?) NTFS also could not handle drives larger than 137GB.

For RAID arrays, it is "best practice" for all drives in the array to be the same make and model.
Depending on the RAID level, using different makes and models of drives can make the array unstable.

Chas

by otl

There were also EIDE controllers that would not support ATA 100 and above, causing the HD to not be recognized in the bios.

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