Hard Drive Help

[JulieAnneBartello]

My laptop(Fujitsu-Siemens Lifebook B-2131) is currently using a Fujitsu MHH2064AT hard drive. Its sitiing at 6.4Gb just now. The system is running Win2000. Ram is 196Mb. Processor is 400MHz. Any ideas whats the biggest hard drive I can upgrade to?

[glc]

That's a good question. It is going to have a bios limitation. This will either be 8.4gb or 33.8gb. I do not know where to get the exact info other than from Fujitsu-Siemens themselves. If you can "borrow" a 10, 20, or 30gb drive from somewhere, you can try it and see if the bios recognizes it. I'm reasonably sure a 40gb drive will not work.

[JulieAnneBartello]

I was checkig online and found a little chart relating to BIOS and hard drive size:

BIOS Dates prior to: (can support...)

Aug 1994 - 528MB

Feb 1996 - 2.1GB

Jan 1998 - 8.4GB

Jun 1999 - 32GB

I went into registry edit and my bios date is showing as 30/11/99...

Do you think I'd be safer sticking to 30gb or pushing it further.

Hope my rambling makes sense here!

[glc]

That's not a hard and fast rule. Over 33.8 is not very likely on a Celeron 400. Only Fujitsu can answer that for sure.

[Mesaeus]

The 32 Gig limit was a bug in Award biosses, what kind of bios do you have, JulieAnneBartello ? What name appears ? Phoenix ? AMI ? Award ? If you buy a 40/80 Gig hard drisk, chances are it'll have a jumper setting to limit to 32G in case of compatibility problems anyway, so you can use it even you have the 32G limit.

[glc]

I haven't seen a limit jumper on notebook drives that's readily identifiable.

Award wasn't the only one who had the 33.6gb limit around that time frame.

[JulieAnneBartello]

My bios is a Pheonix. As I said before the date is the 30/11/99. If its a date issue or a bug, would a bios update do any good? I basically want to get the biggest hard drive possible.

[glc]

A bios update may address this issue, if it in fact exists. Again, one more time, have you asked Fujitsu yet?

[JulieAnneBartello]

I don't know what their support is like where you are, but when I called them I got some really stupid answers. It varied from I can't upgrade at all to there is no maximum limit (not their fault, they most prob only work in a call centre where they get very little training). I know both are wrong. Thats how I ended up here...

[Mesaeus]

glc, are you sure ? I've installed a 80 Gig hard disk in a pre-99 pc without any problem, it was a Compaq pc with Compaq bios. Also, there's this page (http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/hard_drive_size_barriers.htm) which also states that the 32G limit was only in Award bioses.

JulieAnneBartello, Phoenix merged with Award a while ago, and so it could be that your laptop is using a rebranded Award bios. In any case the problem was solved by Award in June '99, so since your bios is older than that, it should be able to handle drives up to 137 Gigabyte.

[JulieAnneBartello]

Mesaeus, I had a look at that page. Could it be that if I got 100Gb, for example, and my laptop couldn't support it, that it would just ignore it and continue to run at the capacity it does now?

[JulieAnneBartello]

Ok, after that last post I found some different articles that contradict everything. I should mention now, I'm a 19 yr old female (its no excuse, I know). I know quite a bit about computers but when it starts getting into FAT32 and heads,cylinders etc, I'm lost!!! Anyway, here's some info. Don't know if this is helpful in this little debate...

Bios: Phoenix
Date: 30/11/99
Version: 1.07
Type: Auto
Cylinders: 12416
Heads: 15
Sectors: 63
Max Capacity: 6007MB

I got this from the BIOS setup.

[glc]

I am not convinced that this bios can go over 32gb. You won't know till you try or get definitive word from Fujitsu.

[Mesaeus]

I admit, a five month difference isn't exactly a guarantee, it can still go wrong. I would be pretty sure about a desktop, but it wouldn't be the first time that a laptop manufacturer does things "their way" and screw up. Fujitsu isn't the best for bios updates either. I had a Fujitsu desktop with the 32G limit a while ago, and Fujitsu never made a bios update to fix the problem. I think 20-32Gig would be a nice capacity for such a laptop (of that age), so if you want to be sure, go for a 20-32G drive but I still think a larger drive would work.

[JulieAnneBartello]

Well, thanks for your advice guys. I'll be taking it all into consideration when I'm deciding what size hard drive to buy. Thanks again. J.A.B