MSI K7T Pro2-A (MS-6330) Max hard-drive size?

[Aero]

'Tis a sad day in Aero's world, my trusty 3 year old hard-drive is showing signs of dying...

I've been wading through MSI's website looking for the biggest hard-drive this motherboard will support, but so far no luck.

Anybody here know what the max HD size is for a MSI K7T Pro2-A?


Currently, I'm looking at a WD-80Gb or maybe a WD-120Gb.

Please help me spend my money wisely...

TIA

[Aero]

/Aero's hard-drive dies from an unknown malady at 10:25AM on 11/22/03

/Aero digs out the old dinocomputer and marvels at it's 75Mhz, proceeds to surf the web at 14.4k looking for info

/Aero falls asleep waiting for a webpages to load, finds nothing

/Aero wakes up, orders a new 24,000Gb hard-drive and hopes it'll work

[rourkchris]

I could be wrong-I often am-but I am not aware that a hard drives size is limited by the motherboard. Usually an update is required(Like SP1 with Windows XP) for drives over 120GB to be fully recognised in Windows.

[Etruscan]

You should be all right with either the 80 or 120. If you check the BIOS link on the page you posted, you'll find BIOS updates that support up to 160gb. However, your current BIOS file should support up to 130gb without an update.

[thronka]

24,000 GB!!?!??! Where!?!?!

[Aero]

Originally posted by rourkchris
I could be wrong-I often am-but I am not aware that a hard drives size is limited by the motherboard. Usually an update is required(Like SP1 with Windows XP) for drives over 120GB to be fully recognised in Windows.

Well, I won't claim to know everything about computers either- (That's why I'm here )
But the way I understand it- the BIOS needs to be able to recognise the max size HD you're going to use. (At least they used to)

The BIOS is the "brain" of the motherboard, so my analogy would seem to be correct...

Originally posted by Etruscan
You should be all right with either the 80 or 120. If you check the BIOS link on the page you posted, you'll find BIOS updates that support up to 160gb. However, your current BIOS file should support up to 130gb without an update.

Hmm... words like "You should be alright" and "should support" aren't exactly what I was looking for.
Yes, that BIOS link says something about enabling support for a "Maxtor 160Gb"- but doesn't say if that's only for that specific HD or what...

Originally posted by thronka
24,000 GB!!?!??! Where!?!?!

They say there's one in every crowd...

[Etruscan]

Nothing is for sure with this junk I've found; so I usually qualify my posts with a word like should or might. The board should (I don't know for certain without trying it) support HDDs up to 130GB from the information on the BIOS page you posted.

[Aero]

Etruscan,

I didn't mean any disrespect with my comment, I was merely expressing my frustration with the lack of information that I have found.
You posted in an attempt to help me, and I do appreciate that.

I've looked everywhere that I know of, and can't determine exactly how big of a HD this thing will support. I know I've got "Award BIOS v6.00pg", (MSI calls it v2.3) and I've researched that and found nothing concrete.

One would think that it would support the 80Gb and the 120Gb, but I'd like to be sure before buying one.


Maybe this is one of those things where you just plug it in and hope for the best, lord knows we've all been there...

I'm heading up to General Nano on Friday to pick up a new drive, will consult those guys up there and hopefully learn something.


Meanwhile, I think I'll play some old DOS games on this dinosaur...

[ru_ready_4_r_n_r]

HI

I have this board, and I am currently running a dual booted win 98 and XP on a 80 gig maxtor. It runs smoothly with no major hiccups except that to make the bios accept the 80 gig i had to run a small prog. that is endorsed with maxtor entitled "MAX BLAST" it re-writes the bios to accept a larger HD. hope this might help you

I have a small problem maybe you can help with.... I have installed a usb 2 firewire combo, and when i try to use it the system freezes... has anyone occured this problem before? and I am trying to find a newer bios update for the board to see if this is a board prob.... thanks any info will be highly appr.

[John Prophet]

almost he only thing you can do is

1) all windows updates
2) bios update
3) driver update for product

then of course the standard stuff like check for viruses.

after that its just a matter of research...checking the website for the product and maybe for the motherboard..looking for faqs etc.

also do some searches on google using different search terms.


ALSO..in this case....I would uninstall it and try it in another pci slot..sometimes that works wonders.

JP