Topic: Single Large IDE Hard Drive

[Matt]

For Christmas I just got a new 100 Gigabyte Hard Drive.  I put it in My SME Server 5.5, then installed the OS over again.  when finished I relized it only recognized 32 GB of the 100  GB's available.  Is this a Limitation to the Bios, or the OS.  I've Tried finding an update to the BIOS but the company that makes my computer (AST) went out of business and they don't offer any support.  I would appreciate any help.

Thanks in advance
Matt

[Nathan Fowler]

If it's an older AST, like you say, it's probably a BIOS limitation.  A 32GB cut-off sounds like BIOS.  I'm not sure if you can use a BIOS over-lay and still be compatible with LILO, perhaps some googling may return some answers.  MaxBlast/EzDrive use BIOS overlay technology to avoid BIOS size limitations in older machines, but the software may be incompatible with Linux.

[Craig Jensen]

From your current setup the 'easiest' and less costly solution would be an ata controller card (PCI, Promise tech, inc)  check out www.promise.com.  Many of the large drives even come with one of these cards.  The one listed here:

http://www.promise.com/product/product_detail_eng.asp?productId=11&familyId=3

is compatible with 66mhz motherboards so I know they have them for fairly old models.  I use one currently controlling a 160 MB hard drive and it works great.

Craig Jensen

[Eric]

Make sure that the jumper isn't set on a 32GB cap.  The new seagate drives do that...

[Rick]

Which model of ast do you have? and which country is it from?(ie: where did you purchase it) many ast pc's use tekram motherboards, some investigation of the chipsets on your board may help or if you can find an fcc id number may help also