Guys, I really badly need your help here.  Please help me out - please . . .

 

I have an old Dimension R450 - I have one question - how can I get a huge 400 GB drive to be fully recognized ???  The limit is 137 GB unless you make some changes.  But I don;t know if ANY of these things will allow my machine to be able to "see" the entire 400 GB.  I have the latest BIOS and on this old machine it does not allow more than 137 GB like some newer machines can with a BIOS upgrade.  Here are the options I am ware of: 

 

Option 1. download the Maxtor Big Drive Enabler software patch. The Maxtor Big Drive Enabler, once executed, will update the Windows registry for large drive support. \

 

*** but will this work on an R450 ??  Don't know, but this seems like it "might" solve my problem.  I emailed Maxtor and they replied, "call for an answer"

Option 2. Download and install the Intel Application accelerator at http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/iaa/, which upgrades the 28-bit LBA addressing to 48-bit.

 

*** NOPE - only for newer systems !!

Option 3: get a PVI ATA or SATA controller card, that has a 48-Bit LBA compliant BIOS and controller driver. The adapter card bypasses the system BIOS and operating system’s controller driver and uses its own BIOS and controller driver. 

 

*** the Promise Ultra ATA 100 TX2 is such a card, but it received horrible reviews from users ( http://www.pricegrabber.com/rating_getprodrev.php/masterid=419815/id_type=masterid  - they complained it could STILL only see 137 GB, and that it did not work with their CD/RW, and that it insisted on placing the CD drive letters "before" the hard drive letters.

Option 4 - buy a huge external USB/Firewire drive, such as the 300 GB "One-Touch" external USB/Firewire drive from Maxtor. 

 

*** USB 1.1 is my motherboard's USB version - slow as molasses.  No firewire and I am out of PCI slots. 

 

***  I am wondering if this will somehow allow the entire drive to be access since it is not using IDE.  But probably it still addresses it using the same methods, and therefore will have the 137 GB limitation. 

 

Any thoughts, ideas, etc ???  TIA

 

lifeson