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Will a MS 6117 Micro Star motherboard support a 20gb hard drive.
We have tried a 40gb hard drive and it would only see it if it was jumpered to 32gb, but it lost all the data on the drive.
Have been to the MSI site and can not see any bios upgrade that says it supports larger hard drives.
Thankyou Regards Peter
by cg it
I downloaded the PDF manual for the MS 6117 and also checked their archive for BIOS updates [probably just as you have], and couldn't find any limitation on large drive support. Your slot 1 board with the Intel Chipset has 32 bit IDE controller, supports PIO modes 0-4, bus mastering, and handles UDMA 33mbps transfer rates.
What you have have to do is manually set your hard drive parameters in the BIOS if the BIOS doesn't properly detect your drive.
by peterbakker
by thechas
There are 2 ways to deal with BIOS limitations on hard drive size.
The 'cheap and dirty' way is to use the BIOS / drive overlay software from the hard drive manufacture.
The elegant method is to install a PCI IDE controller card.
Not only will this take care of the size limits, but for under $30, it will allow you to use the full data transfer rate of a newer drive.
Without looking at your motherboard specifications, I suspect it has a UDMA33 IDE controller. A PCI card with a ATA 100 controller will transfer data 3 times faster from an ATA100 drive.
The reason you lost the data when you changed the jumper on the 40GB drive, is that you then created a new FAT for the drive.
Chas
by peterbakker
by peterbakker
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