GX150 Hard drive

Many Thanks

The SATA card is a great idea. Didn't know they existed. However the GX150 doesnt have much room for an extra drive, in fact it is quite limited, therefore I would need to replace the existing 20Gb HDD. Could I use the SATA card via PCI to host the primary OS drive (ie C Drive), or is a host controller only to be utilised for a secondary drive?

Many Thanks for the input.

Thanks Jesse

Is there a good place to look for any BIOS release notes for A09 and A10 that would give me the HDD capacity limit?

Many Thanks

You can boot from an add-on controller.

BIOS option info below:

"IDE Drive Interface: enables or disables the system's integrated enhanced integrated drive electronics (EIDE) hard drive interface. With Auto (the default) selected, the system turns off the integrated EIDE interface when necessary to accommodate a controller card installed in an expansion slot. As part of the boot routine, the system first checks for a primary hard drive controller card installed in an expansion slot. If no card is found, the system enables the integrated EIDE interface to use IRQ14 and IRQ15. If a primary controller is detected on the expansion bus, the integrated EIDE interface is disabled. Selecting Off disables the integrated EIDE interface."

I never saw Dell docs show capacity's with Bios versions. Unless they had a specific problem and fixed it in a Bios release. 

Thanks for the info, how did you go with cooling? Any problems with heat? The GX150 doesnt seem to have much of an airflow path. Don't know if it matters or not.

The HDD itself does run rather hot.  I haven't done anything for additional cooling.  I don't see how I can.  It's a SFF (tiny) desktop.  No room for more fans.  It's on 24/7 as a NAS device.  I haven't noticed any performance issues.  It's small and quiet.  I like it.  I want to install a 500-750GB drive.

I purchased a PCI SATA adapter to install a 500GB drive that I have, but the connector for the SATA was on top of the card, the card would fit and the case would close, but NOT with the cable inserted into it.  BUMMER!  It was a small enough card, I thought it would fit and work, but apparently you need a card with the SATA connector on the back end of the card.

The good news is that it's a combo card, both SATA & Ultra-IDE-133.  So if the GX150 doesn't recognize the new 500GB IDE, the card most likely would.  The IDE connector is on the back end of the card, lol, reverse of what I needed.

Considered going with an external 500GB USB drive.  But at USB spec 1.1 I think it would be too slow.

I was amazed when I saw the BIOS recognize the full capacity of the hard drive and utilized it.  I thought for sure it would hit the 127GB barrier.

I suppose the cheapest thing for me to do now is to purchase this

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=SATARAID-PCI&cat=CCD

Alot cheaper than a new old tech IDE HDD.  Connector on the back :)

I updated my BIOS to A11 and have tried a Samsung 250Gb PATA HDD directly in my GX150 and it was recognised OK. I loaded WinXPP OK. Unfortuantely the drive was a borrowed one for testing only. I use my GX as basically a storage / backup drive (ultimately a NAS would be the goal). It seemed to do OK, but I am concerned about the cooling. I ran it in that config for two weeks with no problems at all. Ihe tropics and the ambient temp is 30 degrees plus each day so, I think I may have to bite the bullet and buy a drive outright and if it dies through heat stroke I will have to take it on the chin. I am trying to source a PATA 500Gb to try, however it may be quite slow. It would be interesting to see what the size can be pushed to. I will let you know how I get on if I can get a test drive.