Can My Comp Read Over 137 Gbs?

I filled up my 37 GB hard drive so my parents bought me a new one. My dad wanted to get me 250 GB one, but the guy at the store didn't know if my comp had 48 bit addressing. So, my dad got a 120 GB hard drive.

I have a Dell Dimension 4500 PC
Windows XP Home Edition

The question is, how do I know if my comp would be able to read past 137 GBs and if it has 48 bit addressing?

The 250 GB HD is only $50 more than the 120 GB and you get more than twice as much space. So, i think the 250 GB one is a good deal and worht it if my computer can handle it.

Is 120 GBs enough anyway?

It really depends on what you do.

I have a 160GB Harddrive with about 50GB full.

I have like 30 movies, 1000 songs, 50 music videos, 10GB of comedy stuff.

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Originally posted by bigdawgfoxx@17 July 2004 - 14:22
It really depends on what you do.

I have a 160GB Harddrive with about 50GB full.

I have like 30 movies, 1000 songs, 50 music videos, 10GB of comedy stuff.

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Im sure your info really helped him. Know it all

You should try and see if they'll get you the 250, if it cuts it off at 137 then take it back.

wouldn't I have to fill it up to 137 gigs though before i knew if it cut it off there?

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Originally posted by ninjamonkey@17 July 2004 - 15:39
wouldn't I have to fill it up to 137 gigs though before i knew if it cut it off there?

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No... if you go into My Computer and click your hdd, it will tell you the size and how much is available.

Havin problems there Tormentor :P

I think you could get this info from Dell's pages off the net.
Maybe the Manual says about the HD sizes.
Or maybe check the BIOS, if any updates etc.

:cool2:

i searched google and found nothing about dell and 48 bit. and the manual doesn't talk about it.

I think the only thing holding you back would be teh operatiing system.

Buy the 250gb, this is how you will get it to work though (do before buying):
1. Go to dell's website, search for your computer, and download the latest motherboard BIOS version.

2. Download XP SP1.

After doing these i guarantee you it will work. ;) The SP1 isn't even totally necessary. If you wanted to you could make 2 or more "partitions" making sure each one is less than 137gb and you would be set like that instead of having one big drive.

(partitions mean that it shows up in my computer as being two different hard drives, but infact it is only one drive. each "partition" can be formatted seperately.)

I agree with Ross...it's the OS not the PC itself.
XP WILL recognize a HDD over 137GB.

so i don't even need the BIOS then?

I have SP1 by the way.

HD manufactures ship thier drives with programs like E-Z BIOS (Western Digital), that overcome the normal system bios limitations. While a software fix isn't the best thing for a hardware problem... it works. ;)

Go out and buy the biggest hard drive you can find.
The only thing that would limit you is XP, which can handle up to 9TBs. Which is 9,000GBs. :D

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Originally posted by Broken@17 July 2004 - 22:03
The only thing that would limit you is XP, which can handle up to 9TBs. Which is 9,000GBs. :D

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Not necessarily...the os might be able too, but since its only supported file systems are fat32 and ntfs, and ntfs has a max partition size of 2tb doesn't it? not sure, but i think that's it... so how would xp ever be able to handle something 9tb in size? :blink:

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Originally posted by SingaBoiy+17 July 2004 - 17:48--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (SingaBoiy @ 17 July 2004 - 17:48)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-ninjamonkey@17 July 2004 - 15:39
wouldn&#39;t I have to fill it up to 137 gigs though before i knew if it cut it off there?

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No... if you go into My Computer and click your hdd, it will tell you the size and how much is available.

Havin problems there Tormentor :P [/b][/quote]
Ya, i kind of had a chain reaction of accidents there. Thanks to whoever deleted my posts. :lol:

While the FAT32 file system can only support drives up to a standard theoretical size of 2 terabytes, (it "can" be jury-rigged under Windows Millennium Edition to support partitions of up to 8 TB).

Windows XP Professional manages dynamic volumes in a special database instead of in the partition table, so dynamic volumes are not subject to the 2-terabyte physical limit imposed by the partition table. It possible for support up to 9 terabytes, and possible even 16 terabytes with some rigging.

;)

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Originally posted by Broken@17 July 2004 - 23:02
While the FAT32 file system can only support drives up to a standard theoretical size of 2 terabytes, (it "can" be jury-rigged under Windows Millennium Edition to support partitions of up to 8 TB).

Windows XP Professional manages dynamic volumes in a special database instead of in the partition table, so dynamic volumes are not subject to the 2-terabyte physical limit imposed by the partition table. It possible for support up to 9 terabytes, and possible even 16 terabytes with some rigging.

;)

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oh, ok, i googled for the partition size limit of ntfs and it said on a site 2tb lol.

guess it was outdated or something. :lol:

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Originally posted by Broken@17 July 2004 - 21:02
It possible for support up to 9 terabytes, and possible even 16 terabytes with some rigging.

;)

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Whew, what a relief&#33;
Now I won&#39;t have to lose my extensive collection of Paris Hilton ass pictures.

You people complainin about 137gb is too little, back in my day we had 6gb hard drives&#33;
Only able to fit 1 modern game and 1 iso at a time

Of course, back then, what with being chased by dinosaurs all the time, you really didn&#39;t have time to play a lot of games either.

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Originally posted by clocker@18 July 2004 - 04:42
Of course, back then, what with being chased by dinosaurs all the time, you really didn&#39;t have time to play a lot of games either.

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haha. That was particularly funny for some odd reason.

Hmm, i think my dad doesn&#39;t feel like going back to the store unfortunately. So, I&#39;ll probably be with the 120 gig HD anyway. I&#39;ll try to convince him tomorrow though.

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Originally posted by Keikan@18 July 2004 - 04:34
You people complainin about 137gb is too little, back in my day we had 6gb hard drives&#33;
Only able to fit 1 modern game and 1 iso at a time

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Back in your day?
I remember paying £100 for a second hand Seagate 90MB for my Amiga, but I imagine clocker still has fond memories of a 486SX33 with an awe-inducing 20MB internal drive. w0w&#33; ;)

Back in my day Maxtor was called "Quantum"

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Originally posted by Chewie UK@18 July 2004 - 06:32
I remember paying £100 for a second hand Seagate 90MB for my Amiga, but I imagine clocker still has fond memories of a 486SX33 with an awe-inducing 20MB internal drive. w0w&#33; ;)

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I think my first pc (386) had a 10 mb HD... :blink:

First computer I used didn&#39;t have a hard drive. :01:

Booted off network, damn those things were fast. Running UNIX&#092;ICONIX. :)

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Originally posted by Chewie UK@17 July 2004 - 23:32
I imagine clocker still has fond memories of a 486SX33 with an awe-inducing 20MB internal drive. w0w&#33; ;)

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ha&#33;

I remember when hard drives were stone tablets.
Data corruption was never a problem, but seek times sucked.

I went to Plymouth, did 6 hours work and then came straight back, 700 miles in total.

That was a hard drive.

Quote:

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Originally posted by clocker+18 July 2004 - 03:05--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (clocker @ 18 July 2004 - 03:05)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> I agree with Ross...it&#39;s the OS not the PC itself.
XP WILL recognize a HDD over 137GB. [/b]

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not nessisarily........ my old comp (AMD 200 MHz, 64MB Ram) WONT take my 120GB HDD......... wont even take a 20 GB HDD........ just way to big for the mobo to "understand"

<!--QuoteBegin-Keikan@18 July 2004 - 05:34
You people complainin about 137gb is too little, back in my day we had 6gb hard drives&#33;
Only able to fit 1 modern game and 1 iso at a time[/quote]
hahaha.......... my folks first comp was a second hand laptop........ 5MB HDD

from the days mr Gates said that 640KB was all the memory anyone would ever need ;)

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Originally posted by Storm@18 July 2004 - 19:12
from the days mr Gates said that 640KB was all the memory anyone would ever need ;)

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I think that was someone at IBM, and it was 512k, but what the heck. :D

It was still a stupid decision to put the bios ABOVE the main memory (as it was in those days).

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Originally posted by lynx@18 July 2004 - 20:29
It was still a stupid decision to put the bios ABOVE the main memory (as it was in those days).

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please elaborate.......

does it have something to do with the higher and lower memory? never understood that <_<

VIA KT133chipsets only supported up to 120 allegedly(tho&#39; I think it may have been possible to make another partition on bigger discs with a minumum of fiddling), so it&#39;s possible for your chipset to be unable to handle larger discs on-spec.

But if the &#39;puter is newer than that, I think it should be able to handle bigger discs, no matter the chipset, don&#39;t know what dell uses, as I think the shift to mobos that could handle larger discs happened right after KT133 went out of style. 2000 something.

Anyway, this guy seems to be using a 4500 with 200gb hd.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Storm+18 July 2004 - 19:37--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Storm &#064; 18 July 2004 - 19:37)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-lynx@18 July 2004 - 20:29
It was still a stupid decision to put the bios ABOVE the main memory (as it was in those days).

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please elaborate.......

does it have something to do with the higher and lower memory? never understood that <_< [/b][/quote]
Bios sits in the gap between 640k and 1M, although there are usually some big holes in it. If it had been put in the area 0k to 384k, or better still floating depending on the amount of memory, access to memory would have been much easier.

Someone did actually make a pc with that format, and it ran a modified version of MS-DOS. Although programs still had to sit in the first 1M of memory, they could access memory above 1M for data. This was because there was no system protection to stop the bios getting corrupted, because the bios wasn&#39;t in the way, Of course it didn&#39;t take off because not enough people were willing to make 2 versions of their software.

Edit: Btw, I don&#39;t think NT based systems (NT, Win2k, XP etc) use the memory below 640k very much, possibly just for some system tables. And they don&#39;t use the bios either (after booting), except possibly in Safe Mode.

alright, I installed thre 120 drive, but then i click on properties and it says it only has 111 Gigs. Is this normal?

Yes.

Windows assumes 1GB = 1024x1024x1024
Drive makers assume 1GB = 1000,000,000

So drive capacity shown by windows is only about 93% of what the makers state.

those bastards&#33;&#33;

I&#39;m already down to 99 gigs from "120". <_<

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Originally posted by Keikan@18 July 2004 - 03:56
Back in my day Maxtor was called "Quantum"

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No. Maxtor was around at the same time as Quantum. Maxtor bought out Quantum.

I can remember back when data was stored on cassette tape. To load a file of a few KBs took a long time.