size limitations

[rmnsf936]

I am upgrading a computer for a friend. She has a 6 year old pentium 3 system. She gave me a hardrive but it is 120 gb. Will a pentium 3 system support a 120 gb harddrive(I know it supports 80... i tested one of my own..idin't think she would buy a 120gb)

 

[MadModMike]

I am upgrading a computer for a friend. She has a 6 year old pentium 3 system. She gave me a hardrive but it is 120 gb. Will a pentium 3 system support a 120 gb harddrive(I know it supports 80... i tested one of my own..idin't think she would buy a 120gb)

Your Processor has nothing to do with size limitations, only your Operating System. Since she's running a P3, I would submise she's running something pre-Windows 2000, and those only support 127GB-137GB for any drive in Windows 98.

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

 

[hubbardt]

Aslo depends on the motherboard age but 120Gb should be fine.

 

[TabrisDarkPeace]

On the mainboard, if it doesn't work, or if you want to know ahead of time if it should work, check what the mainboard model is for us, and post it back.

eg: "Gigabyte GA-8PENXP Rev 1.2" or something like that.

Even Dell, HP / Compaq, etc mainboards should all have part numbers printed on the board in white, near the video card slot usualy.

If it doesn't work a BIOS update should be all you need.

You'll be wanting to use NTFS (vs FAT32) for a disk that size though for various reasons I won't go into unless you PM or é-mail me.

If a 80 GB HDD works, then chances are a up to 120 GB will also work fine, and maybe even larger.... this is assuming the interface (connector plug) is for ATA100/ATA133 and not Serial ATA which her board is unlikely to support.

 

[apache_lives]

its firstly bios and mobo supported, then os supported - update the bios to the latest and it might work, if not you might be lucky it will post as a smaller but usable size.

 

[mbwoods]

You'll be wanting to use NTFS (vs FAT32) for a disk that size though for various reasons I won't go into unless you PM or é-mail me.

If a 80 GB HDD works, then chances are a up to 120 GB will also work fine, and maybe even larger.... this is assuming the interface (connector plug) is for ATA100/ATA133 and not Serial ATA which her board is unlikely to support.

i have a Compaq Deskpro EN small form factor Pentium3-733, with a 10gig hard drive and running Windows 2000.

as far as i know from the manuals online, the mobo supports ata100, so is it safe to say that i can fit an 120gig ata100 drive?