BIOS Limit

Question

I may be stuck in the old days but is there a BIOS limit on the sizes of Hard disks nowadays?

In particular, is there a limit on the Inspiron 620 in terms of hard disk size?

Thanks - every google search has yielded me no results.

rdunnill · Answer

If you're using it as a data drive, you can use any size you like. However, if you want to boot from it, you're limited to 2.2tb; UEFI and a 64-bit OS is required to boot from larger drives.

speedstep · Answer

The 620 is limited to 2TB because it does not have AHCI controller enabled. You can add a 3rd party AHCI controller.

justahuman · Answer

That means the biggest hard disk it can take is a 2 TB or that the total hard disk cannot exceed 2 TB?

shesagordie · Answer

justahuman It means that each hard drive is not to exceed 2gb. Bev.

rdunnill · Answer

The 620 is limited to 2TB because it does not have AHCI controller enabled.

You can add a 3rd party AHCI controller.

All late-model chipsets (like that of the 620) should recognize large drives properly. Heck, even my old 3100 properly recognizes them.

That means the biggest hard disk it can take is a 2 TB or that the total hard disk cannot exceed 2 TB?

It means that the biggest data drive it can take is 4tb, the largest currently available.

speedstep · Answer

'All late-model chipsets (like that of the 620) should recognize large drives properly. ' The Inspiron 620 bios is crippled and Fixed ATAPI Period End.  You CANNOT USE AHCI drivers because this mode cannot be enabled in the bios. Please do not post anecdotal non scientific information that does not match reality.  There is NO SETTING in the bios for AHCI and therefore INTEL RST Drivers do not install and AHCI is not an option. The 2TB Limit in this specific case has to do with ATAPI aka ATA vs AHCI. Dell Insprion 620/Vostro 260  NO Bios Setting for AHCI Interestingly I could not even update the bios without the INTEL Management Drivers. Checking in the Device manager the machine is using the ATA drivers not the AHCI drivers AND the INTEL RST drivers will not install. I did try updating to Bios version A04 but this made no difference. Intel(R) H61 Express Chipset Family LPC Interface Controller - 1C5C PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C5C&SUBSYS_04ED1028&REV_05PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C5C&SUBSYS_04ED1028PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C5C&CC_060100PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C5C&CC_0601

rdunnill · Answer

All late-model chipsets (like that of the 620) should recognize large drives properly. "

The Inspiron 620 bios is crippled and Fixed ATAPI Period End. You CANNOT USE AHCI drivers because this mode cannot be enabled in the bios. Please do not post anecdotal non scientific information that does not match reality. There is NO SETTING in the bios for AHCI and therefore INTEL RST Drivers do not install and AHCI is not an option.

RST is not need for the recognition of large hard drives. For example, my Dimension 3100 (Windows 8.1 32-bit) has options for ATA and RAID, and with ATA (another name for IDE) selected, the onboard SATA recognizes large hard drives without issue.

rdunnill · Answer

My 3100 is locked into ATA mode by the BIOS and it has no trouble recognizing large hard drives. And it is not true that Windows 7 drivers cannot recognize partitions greater than 2.2tb.

As for partitioning, it is an OS issue, not a BIOS issue.

Again I'm talking about a system that I actually own. Been there Done that.

48bit LBA (Large Block Addressing) is limited to 2TB.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=305098

This article is for Windows 2000, not Vista/7/8.X.

speedstep · Answer

The inspiron 620 bios does not allow sata drivers NATIVE or RST. It is locked into ATA mode so you cannot upgrade SSD firmware either. A 3TB drive will show up IMPROPERLY as 750gIg.

Like other kinds of software, the Intel RST drivers are updated to keep pace with new technology. The Intel drivers found in retail releases of Windows 7 have a 2.2TB limitation. Rather than cut off the capacity at 2.2TB, the limitation expresses itself as the remainder above 2.2TB. In other words, the driver causes the Windows operating to see a 3TB drive as 746.52 GiB (or 800GB). Native windows sata drivers Do not work and INTEL RST must be version 10.1 or higher or they too will not properly see a drive greater than 2TB.

http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/218615en

Again I'm talking about a system that I actually own. Been there Done that.

48bit LBA (Large Block Addressing) is limited to 2TB.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=305098

The MBR is not located in a partition; it is located at a first sector of the device (physical offset 0), preceding the first partition.

Since block addresses and sizes are stored in the partition table of an MBR using 32 bits, the maximum size as well as the highest start address of a partition using drives that have 512-byte sectors (actual or emulated) cannot exceed 2 TiB−512 bytes (2,199,023,255,040 bytes or 4,294,967,295 sectors × 512 bytes per sector).

The inspiron 620 Bios does not allow the creation of GPT PARTITIONS and is NOT UEFI BIOS.

rdunnill · Answer

32-bit Win7 supports large partitions, ATA mode supports large partitions and UEFI is not needed for large partitions. (UEFI is, of course, needed to boot from a large partition.)

In the event that the 620's onboard SATA can't recognize large drives, there's the option of a third-party card, which has its own BIOS and drivers. That's how I got my old Dimension 2350, which has no concept of SATA, period, to recognize and GPT-format a large drive. I'm betting the onboard SATA will, but I'm averse to spending $$$ on a 620 to prove my point. (My next Dell will be an OptiPlex 790 SFF.)

speedstep · Answer

Goto the device manager on your 3100 and show the ATAPI IDE driver mounting a SATA AHCI drive that is Larger than 2.2TB with MBR partition and the windows default ATA driver. (You can't)

If AHCI were possible it would show with the native drivers

AHCI is enabled or disabled in BIOS, if enabled all ports and HDDs on that controller are in AHCI mode. (There is no way to do this on an Inspiron 620 its just not there in the bios.)

NTFS is currently limited to 256 TB for a single volume.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2581408

The management of modern storage devices is addressed by using a scheme called Logical Block Addressing (LBA). This is the arrangement of the logical sectors that constitute the media. "LBA0" represents the first logical sector of the device, and the last LBA designation represents the last logical sector of the device, one label per sector. To determine the capacity of the storage device, you multiply the number of logical sectors within the device by the size of each logical sector. The current size standard is 512 bytes. For example, to achieve a device that has a capacity of 2 TB, you must have 3,906,250,000 512-byte sectors. However, a computer system requires 32 bits (1s and 0s) of information to represent this large number. Therefore, any storage capacity that is greater than what can be represented by using 32 bits would require an additional bit. That is, 33 bits.

The problem in this computation is that the partitioning scheme that is used by most modern Windows-based computers is MBR (master boot record). This scheme sets a limit of 32 for the number of bits that are available to represent the number of logical sectors.

The 2-TB barrier is the result of this 32-bit limitation. Because the maximum number that can be represented by using 32-bits is 4,294,967,295, this translates to 2.199 TB of capacity by using 512-byte sectors (approximately 2.2 TB). Therefore, a capacity beyond 2.2 TB is not addressable by using the MBR partitioning scheme.

Capacity beyond 2 TB cannot be addressed by Windows if the disk is initialized by using the MBR partitioning scheme. For example, for a 3 TB single disk that is initialized by using MBR, Windows can create partitions up to the first 2 TB. However, the remaining capacity cannot be addressed and, therefore, cannot be used.

speedstep · Answer

What you are saying is that ' you can hook up a 3TB drive to an Inspiron 620 then add a 3TB MBR PARTITION AND FORMAT IT' with 32 bit windows 7 and it will see the whole drive and it will work. Not 64 BIT WIN7 SP1 but 32 bit win7 that MY 620 came with from dell. That statement does not match reality. 1.  It will not see the whole drive. It will show 750 gig from disk utility. 2.  It cannot be changed in bios from ATA to AHCI mode. There is no setting for sata mode in the bios. 3.  It cannot create a 64 bit UEFI/GPT partition. (No setting for this in the bios) Those are facts not subject to interpretation.  The 2.2TB limit has to do with MBR not with Bios. The 2.2TB limit has to do with 32 bit vs 64 bit windows not with bios. Larger drives are possible with non boot drives but the largest MBR partition must still be 2.2TB Seagate makes overlay tools to use as storage VS boot drive. The 120 gig limit has to do with 48 bit LBA and bios.  Intel RAID (RST)does not yet support disk drives greater than 2.2TB. Seagate DiscWizard does not support Extended Capacity volumes above 2.2TB in systems with Intel RAID in use on other drives.

rdunnill · Answer

The 2.2TB limit has to do with 32 bit vs 64 bit windows not with bios.

The 2.2tb limit is due the MBR number-of-sectors field being 32-bit (2^32 * 512 bytes is 2.2tb), not Windows.

Intel RST is not needed for large drive support.

Goto the device manager on your 3100 and show the ATAPI IDE driver mounting a SATA AHCI drive that is Larger than 2.2TB with MBR partition and the windows default ATA driver. (You can't)

The largest partition size MBR supports is 2.2tb. That's a limit of the MBR scheme, not Windows. Larger partitions require GPT, which is supported by 32-bit Windows.

speedstep · Answer

You are deflecting. The OP Question was about large drives on the Inspiron 620.

Can you use 3TB and larger drives on a 620. YES

Can you use all the space on them without Controllers and or Bios extensions and software? NO.

You can Overcome the MBR limitation on SATA Drives in AHCI mode for NON Boot Drives with special driver software and HBA aka X1 Controller.

The 2.2 TB limit though remains in the ATAPI ATA Driver for windows.

Why do I keep hammering on MBR?? Because that is the ONLY Boot partition type that the Inspiron 620 supports. It does not have UEFI bios. It cannot make GPT boot partitions. Larger than 2.2 TB Boot partitions REQUIRES 64 bit windows and many Dell machines like the Inspiron 620 that I own came with 32 BIT windows 7.

You also CANNOT make a 12TB Striped volume with Sofware Raid on Most INTEL RST ICH controllers. Not sure about SYBA SI-PEX40064 PCI-Express x1 hardware raid. 16TB might be possible JBOD.

rdunnill · Answer