Arch Linux

ste

Member

Registered: 2006-05-23

Posts: 15

IDE controller recommendations

Hi

I'm going to be adding some large hard drives to an older K7S5A based machine. The board itself, while not that old (late 2001?) doesn't support 48bit LBA to my knowledge even with BIOS updates so I won't be able to use super large drives without a PCI IDE card. Are there any specific models recommended for use with Linux/Arch? I'm talking consumer level stuff here, no expensive offerings

I've also heard that it doesn't necessarily matter; so long as the OS is booting off a smaller hard drive, the OS will handle things and I should be able to use the full capacity of drives larger than 130gb, or whatever the old limit is, is this correct at all?

Thanks in advance, if anyone can help.

rayjgu3

Member

From: Chicago IL usa

Registered: 2004-07-04

Posts: 695

Re: IDE controller recommendations

i used to have one of those till i fried it man i ptu that thing through hell
have you tried the overclockers bios ?
http://www.geocities.com/honeymoon36/forums.html
specifically
http://p199.ezboard.com/fk7s5amotherboa … 1222.topic
or check this out
http://www.ocworkbench.com/2002/ecs/k7s5aguide/  <<i never did get into the mods as i killed the board before i was ready to try them for reasons being mostly $ at the time

also look into
ami bios editor  i wanna say the program you want is bcm or bmc i could very well be wrong on both accounts but if you find the right editor you probably could unlock your bios to larger capicity HDD ,maybe?
beware of version of your editor i tried one it worked tried a newer version which left me out in the cold
if youd like some backup bios chips i do have some i paid like $5.00 each for them pm if youd like them we can set something up
or if you really want to upgrade your board ive got nothing but good things to say bout asus . if you do decide to upgrade & want to dump that old k7s5a id be interested in it again pm if thats the case

The_Nerd

Member

From: Syracuse, NY / Baltimore, MD

Registered: 2005-11-30

Posts: 134

Website

Re: IDE controller recommendations

If those bioses dont fix your problem... I've always had great luck with Highpoint ata controllers. I own 4 of them and they have great linux support and very good performance. They're not very expensive either, I think you can find a 2 port ata card for like $50.