40 Gig HD

[Kitsune]

I have a K6-450 with an ATX board as my backup machine. The machine is a 1998 built machine. I got a 40 Gig hard drive and the auto detect, it cannot detect the harddrive. Should I try manually setting the harddrive up as far as cyl and sectors? If so, is this a common problem?

[Batman]

I have a K6-450 with an ATX board as my backup machine. The machine is a 1998 built machine. I got a 40 Gig hard drive and the auto detect, it cannot detect the harddrive. Should I try manually setting the harddrive up as far as cyl and sectors? If so, is this a common problem?

Assuming all the hardware is in order, manually setting the harddrive is likely going to do zilch because your board's BIOS is simply incapable of handling that size HDDs (not too unlikely in a '98 built machine).
Chances are a BIOS update will take care of the problem.
If my diagnosis is correct yes, that is an extremely common problem.

[Kitsune]

Assuming all the hardware is in order, manually setting the harddrive is likely going to do zilch because your board's BIOS is simply incapable of handling that size HDDs (not too unlikely in a '98 built machine).
Chances are a BIOS update will take care of the problem.
If my diagnosis is correct yes, that is an extremely common problem.

I did not even think about that. I looked at the revision of my bios and the next revision supports haddrives over 32 GB. For safety reasons, I am not doing it today just in case Charley decides to shut down power here.

[Pu-239]

I got around mine by obtaining a Ultra 100 TX2 ATA controller. There may be a jumper option you can use to disable the autodetect, to allow ez-disk to load- I don't think you need EZ-Disk that if you run 2K/XP/Linux.

[Kitsune]

I updated the BIOS and the machine now sees the 40 Gig hard drive. Really, the manufactures are not being quite honest, it really is a 37.2 Gig hard drive. I got almost everything backed up to it as well.

One side item is that when I build a new computer, I am thinking about looking for a board with more IDE slots...would people recommend that?

[darthdavid]

I updated the BIOS and the machine now sees the 40 Gig hard drive. Really, the manufactures are not being quite honest, it really is a 37.2 Gig hard drive.

They're being sorta honest. You're computer measures a gig as 1024 megabytes because it's easier to deal with mathmatically. They list the size of the drive with gigabytes that equal 1000 megabytes. And yes, they do include that in the fine print. Peopel just never look at that so they don't realize.

[phongn]

HD manufacturers use decimal megabyte (aka 1MB = 10^6 B); most operating systems use binary megabyte -- which technically is a mebibyte (1MiB = 2^20 B).

Thus, 40GB == ~37.2 GiB.

[Praxis]

computer uses binary, so it's a lot easier for the computer to count in multiples of 8, like 1024.

On the other hand, it's easier for the customer to count in multiples of 10, hence they tell us 1 GB = 1000 MB.

[Darth Wong]

Why do computer people think that the use of "mega=1000000" is some kind of cheat?

The correct meaning of of the SI prefix "mega" is 1000000, not 1048576. The latter number is strictly a computer approximation which is convenient for the designers of binary hardware.

[Batman]

Why do computer people think that the use of "mega=1000000" is some kind of cheat?

We don't. What us 'computer people' object to is the industry using 'MegaByte' (which, as you point out, is 1,000,000 Byte) and 'MB' (which is 1,048,576 Byte) interchangeably.
If you're selling a 40,000 MB harddrive that actually is only 40,000 MegaBytes chances are you're going to upset some people.
Oh, and it's usually laypeople that complain about that. Us 'computer people' DO know the difference and mostly don't care...

[Batman]

One side item is that when I build a new computer, I am thinking about looking for a board with more IDE slots...would people recommend that?

Err, there's no such thing as 'IDE slots'. Are you looking for more PCI/ISA slots, or for more opportunities to connect IDE devices (which is propably more cheaply done with an add-on IDE controller)?

[sketerpot]

Why do computer people think that the use of "mega=1000000" is some kind of cheat?

We don't. What us 'computer people' object to is the industry using 'MegaByte' (which, as you point out, is 1,000,000 Byte) and 'MB' (which is 1,048,576 Byte) interchangeably.
If you're selling a 40,000 MB harddrive that actually is only 40,000 MegaBytes chances are you're going to upset some people.
Oh, and it's usually laypeople that complain about that. Us 'computer people' DO know the difference and mostly don't care...

Officially, MB = megabyte = 1000000 bytes. Mebibyte = MiB = 1048576 bytes. What I object to is when hard drives take advantage of this ambiguity to list sizes in units that could be SI or could be the old way, which will naturally cause some deliberate confusion. I say that they should do something like this:

The Drool-o-Rama Drive: 500 Gigabytes
465.66 Gibibytes

That would remove all doubt, an we could get on with our lives.

[Batman]

Officially, MB = megabyte = 1000000 bytes. Mebibyte = MiB = 1048576 bytes. What I object to is when hard drives take advantage of this ambiguity to list sizes in units that could be SI or could be the old way, which will naturally cause some deliberate confusion. I say that they should do something like this:
The Drool-o-Rama Drive: 500 Gigabytes
465.66 Gibibytes
That would remove all doubt, an we could get on with our lives.

I have never heard the term MiB to this day (which propably means my computer people membership is about to be cancelled. Drek...), the units as I know them are MB(1e6 bytes) and MByte (2^20Byte). Which, of course, was not what I wrote in my original post. My apologies.
Your point is sort of what I tried to get across: If the consumer, who likely as not does NOT know the difference between GB and GByte/Gibibyte, buys a 40 Gig HDD and his computer tells him its 37.something, there's bound to be some complaining...

[phongn]

That would remove all doubt, an we could get on with our lives.

I have never heard the term MiB to this day (which propably means my computer people membership is about to be cancelled. Drek...), the units as I know them are MB(1e6 bytes) and MByte (2^20Byte). Which, of course, was not what I wrote in my original post. My apologies.[/quote]
MB==MByte. There is no difference.

Your point is sort of what I tried to get across: If the consumer, who likely as not does NOT know the difference between GB and GByte/Gibibyte, buys a 40 Gig HDD and his computer tells him its 37.something, there's bound to be some complaining...

Usually on the box it says "1GB = 1000MB" and that the computer may consider it different.

[Batman]

MB==MByte. There is no difference.

Admittedly I may be confused about the actual terms, but there ate two different terms for binary and decimal and I think MB vs MByte is how it breaks down, at least in Germany.
The fact remains that there ARE two terms that are not really differentiated by the industry.
While I personally happen to have no problem with that because
a) I know the difference, and by extension, how to tell the difference in capacity, and
b) the difference in capacity is usually not worth griping about,
given that a lot of consumers don't I can easily see them griping about it.

Usually on the box it says "1GB = 1000MB" and that the computer may consider it different.

Box? What box? You buy a HDD here, it comes in an antistatic bag and hopefully with a specifications leaflet.
And that requires you to have physical access to the thing. Given that you usually pick them out of a catalogue...
While, on further contemplation, that catalogue propably has the '1GB=1000MB / 1MB= 1,000,000 Bytes' statement somewhere in the small print, what do you expect is the propability of a consumer actually reading that? Same for Websites WRT online shopping.

[Kitsune]

Err, there's no such thing as 'IDE slots'. Are you looking for more PCI/ISA slots, or for more opportunities to connect IDE devices (which is propably more cheaply done with an add-on IDE controller)?

Well, what is the specific term for where you connect the IDE cable on the motherboard. I do kind of wish they made new motherboard with ISA slots because my old ISA modem is very relable, I think because it is hardware driven not software driven.

[Vertigo1]

Well, what is the specific term for where you connect the IDE cable on the motherboard. I do kind of wish they made new motherboard with ISA slots because my old ISA modem is very relable, I think because it is hardware driven not software driven.

Its called a port. At any rate the majority of the motherboards out there only have two. There were some that had four (Asus A7V springs to mind), but those are few and far between on the consumer level. You're better off buying a PCI IDE controller and plugging the drives into that.

[Kitsune]

Box? What box? You buy a HDD here, it comes in an antistatic bag and hopefully with a specifications leaflet.
And that requires you to have physical access to the thing. Given that you usually pick them out of a catalogue...
While, on further contemplation, that catalogue propably has the '1GB=1000MB / 1MB= 1,000,000 Bytes' statement somewhere in the small print, what do you expect is the propability of a consumer actually reading that? Same for Websites WRT online shopping.

Hmm, I had a choice of Best Buys or a local computer store. The Best Buy drives were around $76 to $79 and the computer store was $62 for 40 Gig drives. Best Buys drives were in boxes but the computer store's drives were in anti-static bags which they were nice enough to also wrap in bubble wrap. I am not paying an extra 15 to 18 dollars for a pretty box.

I realized how the desciption of MB in drives is for the metric prefix bu just thinking of it as a bit funny. As well, a MB of ram is 1024 kilobytes. Also, the old drive is a 4 Gig drive and windows sees it as 3.99 Gigs which is close enough. They seem to have somewhere changed their terms.

[Vertigo1]

I realized how the desciption of MB in drives is for the metric prefix bu just thinking of it as a bit funny. As well, a MB of ram is 1024 kilobytes. Also, the old drive is a 4 Gig drive and windows sees it as 3.99 Gigs which is close enough. They seem to have somewhere changed their terms.

Actually, nothing has changed. What you're seeing is the cluster size effect. I suggest you read up on how formatting is done to really understand.

[Kitsune]

Its called a port. At any rate the majority of the motherboards out there only have two. There were some that had four (Asus A7V springs to mind), but those are few and far between on the consumer level. You're better off buying a PCI IDE controller and plugging the drives into that.

Well, I have been told that somer boards have a lifetime warrantee on them and was thinking about trying to get a better board when I rebuild

Still, not really a big deal. I don't know if I will really ever need more than 4 IDE devices..figure two large hard drives, a normal DVD Rom and a read/write DVD rom theoretically. Don't know what else would be needed.

[phongn]

Actually, nothing has changed. What you're seeing is the cluster size effect. I suggest you read up on how formatting is done to really understand.

It's not the cluster size effect, actually.

[Batman]

Actually, nothing has changed. What you're seeing is the cluster size effect. I suggest you read up on how formatting is done to really understand.

It's not the cluster size effect, actually.

Absolutely. The cluster size effect means that regardless of what your system claims your HDD size is, the useable size is less because regardless of the actual size of a file it will occupy a minimum/multiple of (clustersize) of drive space.
NTM that effect is mainly related to FAT16 partitions which in a just world ought to be extinct outside pure DOS environments...