[QUOTE=coolcolors;2185403]First what is your O/S your using if you want to use 137G and higher you O/S has to be ie XP pro sp3 or higher to use the larger HDD drives. Also what kinda HDD connectors do you have if IDE your should use 80 pin cable. Also if you plan to use more then one drive you need the set the correct jumper pins as well. Since we don’t know your computer make and model or motherboards we can only toss out the usually requirements that you need.[/QUOTE]
XP-SP3 required to use drives larger than 137gb? No.
I was using a 160gb drive on my P3-500Mhz while still running Win98se.
I’m still using that 160gb drive on my “new” P4-2.6GHz computer running Win2K-sp4.
What limits the maximum HDD size is NOT the OS, but the BIOS
(Firmware) of the computer in question, the BIOS can often be
changed (within limits), but that gets beyond the typical explaining
it to the NEWB answers.
Saying that XP-SP3 is “required” is just plain wrong.
the rest of the reply is correct inthat we need to know the CPU, OS and other parameters of your computer… so we can take an educated guess…
The other question is the IDE/PATA used on older computers (Up to P4)
Vs the newer SATA drives that are used on most “Dual core” or newer computers, though in a desktop you can get appropriate controller cards
to run any type of drive you want… or SCSI (Essentially only used on MAC nowadays)
another issue is that the limits are different when you are discussing
"boot drives" versus “storage drives” but again, that varies with BIOS.
Beginning to see how complex the issue is getting?
as a generalization if you have a Pentium4-2.4GHz or faster you can probably ignore the 132Gb limit, as I have never personally encountered a problem making a 160Gb drive work in a P4-2.4 or better.
as for larger drives? I can’t say, I haven’t tried.
IF you ask me later in January I’ll be prepared to answer, as I will be attempting to install a 320-500Gb in my computer
AD