laptop harddisk compatibilities

cdex · 09-18-2002, 11:00 AM

hello,

does anyone know if it is possible to put a 'rather' new 2.5" harddisk (u-dma 66, 20gb) in an old 486/pentium notebook ?

There is actually an 1.3gb harddisk inside and i wonder if such a 20gb drive with the same/right connectors would be useable in such an outdated notebook ...

Are there hardware/bios limitations ?

I hope somebody can help me ...

thanks+greets,
cdex.

DavidPhillips · 09-18-2002, 11:06 AM

there may be limitations in your bios

there are boot loaders that will bypass the bios

cdex · 09-18-2002, 11:37 AM

for example (bootloaders f. linux) ?

but you think there should be no really big trouble which could prevent me using such hd ?

DavidPhillips · 09-19-2002, 05:24 PM

The bios will likely support 2.1G or 8.5G.

I think the bios will be problem, but it's worth a try, maybe manual configuration will help. Just make sure it's right, according to the drive geometry.

See if the hard disk supports it's own bios, not a great thing in my opinion, but was a very popular option back in the "upgrade the old 486 days".

Of course the best thing may be to go with the boot loader to start with, if it will work.

nuni is a non-bios bootloader

I like this howto, very good info

http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/linux/Large-Disk-1.html