How old are these machines??
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| DigitaLink Mar 31, 2006 9:20 AM EDT |
I just dropped a 200GB IDE drive in a late 90's PIII 550MHz system a couple of weeks ago with absolutely no issues. Dropped a PAIR of 200 IDE's into an even older PIII 500MHz system to act as a file server in the office with no problems whatsoever. If those machines won't support more than 120GB drives, they must be true proof as to the ability of linux to keep ancient hardware alive. |
| Skapare Mar 31, 2006 9:43 AM EDT |
These machines need BIOS upgrade. With larger drives installed, they freeze up in BIOS before getting to a boot loader. What I think will work is a SCSI, SATA, Firewire, or USB drive that I can configure the BIOS to ignore (or it will ignore because it doesn't know). When I get some cash, I may go with an eSATA card and eSATA drive and see how that works. I'd still need to boot from the internal IDE drive. But I could move all my non-system files out to the eSATA drive and have plenty of room on the IDE for many different systems (I might even try to see how many I can squeeze onto a 120 GB disk ... lotsa Linux distributions and BSD varieties and maybe even Solaris and ... oh not that one). |
| grouch Apr 01, 2006 8:27 AM EDT |
Have you tried installing 2 drives? Try using a drive small enough to suit the BIOS as the 1st drive, set the 2nd as "not installed" in the BIOS. Linux won't have any trouble using the 2nd drive. This work-around handles many old BIOSes. |
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