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General discussion

boot overlay or controller card?

Aug 15, 2004 12:25AM PDT

I has an older mobo with 8gb Hdd limit, want to add 40gb-80gb, cheapies are Maxtor or Western Digital.
1. gossip I've heard is that Maxtor has early (<5yr) failure rate. What's your experience?
2. Are there drawbacks to using the cheaper solution of boot overlay (EZbios and such)or is there a better one? I may want to slave other Hdd's to checkout. What if both have boot overlay, will there be a conflict?
3. I know Promise controller cards will work (dma33-66), but will older ISA cards also translate the CHS, cards from old 486 DX2? I've tried to research 2 old ones and can't find info for max Hdd useage.

Discussion is locked

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Re: boot overlay or controller card?
Aug 15, 2004 12:47AM PDT

1. It's right on their web site. 5 years is noted as the design lifespan. Of course my neighbor can't get that much since their screensaver and main application for their PC is "Disk Defragmenting..."

If you must exceed 5 years, then move out of the consumer class products and get a backup tape unit too.

2. If we stick with reality, the drive overlay is just fine. Where people have problems is they don't make a boot diskette to get at their files when the OS didn't boot, or forget how to remove it when they move the drive.

But the biggest sin is they didn't have a backup plan. They run along with files and pictures that "can't lose" on a hard disk with no backup. Denial about backup is rampant. Most learn the lesson firsthand.

3. ISA cards run at very slow transfer speeds. Even if you managed to get it to work, a SCANdISK could take days.

Bob

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Re: boot overlay or controller card?
Aug 15, 2004 10:52PM PDT

If you work very hard you could whatever setup you want to play along. IMHO, you're pushing the whole envelope and the end result is making it work, but it will be a beast so slow and *maybe* prone to any bump in the road. Play, if you like but I think you're time could be best spend on a newer system but not the latest as the solution is already build-in via the mtrbd. bios. Get a P-III or AMD cpu of at least 1Ghz or better. YES, the overlay s/w is probably the besy way to go any other solution if not spending money is OK, otherwise cost maybe too much. Idealily, a bios upgrade(update) if possible or replacement would be the best solution that supports LBA beyond 8gb.

good luck -----Willy Happy

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Thanks Willy and Robert. I run into many 8gb mobos.
Aug 16, 2004 11:09PM PDT

Too many friends wanting free fixes. I rarely find bios updates that kick the 8gb limit. Friends won't spend on new mobo nor new system. Ebay cost of old =< 8gb hdd is slowly rising. Since you imply that old ISA controller cards will recog >8gb, I'll take the time to check it out. I rarely (previously) have found jumper info on them.
A year ago, I had a prob with a 2gb+ezbios slave recoging in bios but not Win because the overlay didn't get a chance to fire up. Came from an older 540mb limit PC. Disable EZ and it's ok on my machine for checking out the Hdd.