Largest IDE hard drive supported by internal connector

[Daniel Potts]

On Thu, 16 Sep 2004, Maurice Hilarius wrote:

> With regards to your message at 07:22 PM 9/15/04, Ted Goodridge, Jr.. Where 
> you stated:
>
>>> 2GB I believe
>>  I'm seeing a lot of drives on ebay listed as 2.1Gig...could you narrow
>> down that limit better?  (Advertised sizes don't always equal bios sizes)
>> 
>> Ted
>
>
> You can put in larger, but you will only be able to address 2GB, I believe..
> Of course, once you have Linux up, you can get at the rest, at least up to 
> 128GB.
> The first partition you boot from has to be no larger than 2GB.
>
> It's a BIOS limitation.

Hi,

This is probably correct. In my multia I have a 2.5" IDE disk that is 
3.0GB in size. Linux (and MILO) recognises it fine. I never noticed any 
problems with AlphaBIOS, however the boot partition (FAT formatted) is 
small and at the start of the disk. Note that SRM on Multia does not 
support IDE.

Ted, to answer your second question: If you get a normal (3 inch?) drive 
you can purchase a 2.5" <-> normal connector. For the laptop drive, a 
standard straight-through cable should work fine.. (I had to shave the 
edges off mine to get it to fit from memory.. I probably used an existing 
mini-scsi?? cable that was in the case :)

Cheers,
Daniel