Techniques In Drive Configuration; The 528-Megabytes Barrier; The 8.4-Gigabytes Barrier - Maxtor DiamondMax10 80 Installation And Use Manual

Installation
3.5 Before you Start
Unlike standard ATA drives, Serial ATA drives do not require the use of jumpers to
configure the drive.
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3.6

TECHNIQUES IN DRIVE CONFIGURATION

3.6.1

The 528-Megabytes Barrier

Older BIOS that only support Int 13 commands for accessing ATA drives through
DOS based operating systems will be limited to use only 1024 cylinders. This will
reduce the effective capacity of the drive to 528Mbytes.
Whenever possible the Maxtor DiamondMax 10 80/100/120/160/200/250/
300GB Serial ATA drive should be used on systems that support LBA translation to
ensure the use of the entire capacity of the disk drive. If that is not possible the
following are some techniques that can be used to overcome this barrier.
• Use a third party software program that translates the hard drive
parameters to an acceptable configuration for MS-DOS.
• Use a hard disk controller that translates the hard drive parameters to an
appropriate setup for both MS-DOS and the computer system's ROM-
BIOS.
3.6.2

The 8.4-Gigabytes Barrier

Newer BIOS's allow users to configure disk drives to go beyond the 528MB barrier
by using several BIOS translation schemes. However, while using these translations
the BIOS using Int 13 functions are limited to 24 bits of addressing which results in
another barrier at the 8.4GB capacity.
To overcome this barrier a new set of Int 13 extensions are being implemented by
most BIOS manufacturers. The new Int 13 extension allows for four words of
addressing space (64 bits) resulting in 9.4 Terrabytes of accessible space.
3-14 DiamondMax 10 80/100/120/160/200/250/300GB Serial ATA