Does P5A support 120 GB hard drive?

I have an Asus P5A motherboard with the 1.07 bios, and when I attached
a 120 GB hard drive to it, it only recognized it as a 32 GB hard
drive. What is the latest BIOS for that mobo, and what's the maximum
hard drive size that it supports?

void.no.spam.com@gmail.com wrote:
> I have an Asus P5A motherboard with the 1.07 bios, and when I attached
> a 120 GB hard drive to it, it only recognized it as a 32 GB hard
> drive. What is the latest BIOS for that mobo, and what's the maximum
> hard drive size that it supports?

Check for a "clip jumper" on the back of the drive. With
IDE drives, one of the jumper positions limits drive size
by a geometry trick. Use of that jumper, could result
in seeing a 32GB sized drive.

The FAQ page for older Asus motherboards is here. It looks like
a 120GB drive should work.

http://rma.asus.de/support/FAQ/faq076_32gb_ide_hdd.htm

On Jun 9, 12:28 am, Paul <nos...@needed.com> wrote:
> void.no.spam....@gmail.com wrote:
> > I have an Asus P5A motherboard with the 1.07 bios, and when I attached
> > a 120 GB hard drive to it, it only recognized it as a 32 GB hard
> > drive. What is the latest BIOS for that mobo, and what's the maximum
> > hard drive size that it supports?
>
> Check for a "clip jumper" on the back of the drive. With
> IDE drives, one of the jumper positions limits drive size
> by a geometry trick. Use of that jumper, could result
> in seeing a 32GB sized drive.

I had used it in my other computer as a 120 GB drive, so that can't be
the problem.

> The FAQ page for older Asus motherboards is here. It looks like
> a 120GB drive should work.
>
> http://rma.asus.de/support/FAQ/faq076_32gb_ide_hdd.htm

I found the 1011.005 beta BIOS (5/13/2002) on the Asus web site, and
flashed it. In the BIOS, it still detected the drive as a 33.8 GB
drive.

void.no.spam.com@gmail.com wrote:
> On Jun 9, 12:28 am, Paul <nos...@needed.com> wrote:
>> void.no.spam....@gmail.com wrote:
>>> I have an Asus P5A motherboard with the 1.07 bios, and when I attached
>>> a 120 GB hard drive to it, it only recognized it as a 32 GB hard
>>> drive. What is the latest BIOS for that mobo, and what's the maximum
>>> hard drive size that it supports?
>> Check for a "clip jumper" on the back of the drive. With
>> IDE drives, one of the jumper positions limits drive size
>> by a geometry trick. Use of that jumper, could result
>> in seeing a 32GB sized drive.
>
> I had used it in my other computer as a 120 GB drive, so that can't be
> the problem.
>
>> The FAQ page for older Asus motherboards is here. It looks like
>> a 120GB drive should work.
>>
>> http://rma.asus.de/support/FAQ/faq076_32gb_ide_hdd.htm
>
> I found the 1011.005 beta BIOS (5/13/2002) on the Asus web site, and
> flashed it. In the BIOS, it still detected the drive as a 33.8 GB
> drive.

Did you move the jumpers around ? Double check the jumpers.
If using cable select, try master/slave, or vice versa.

If it won't work, you could try installing a PCI
IDE card and use that instead.

Paul

On Jun 10, 12:52 am, Paul <nos...@needed.com> wrote:
> void.no.spam....@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Jun 9, 12:28 am, Paul <nos...@needed.com> wrote:
> >> void.no.spam....@gmail.com wrote:
> >>> I have an Asus P5A motherboard with the 1.07 bios, and when I attached
> >>> a 120 GB hard drive to it, it only recognized it as a 32 GB hard
> >>> drive. What is the latest BIOS for that mobo, and what's the maximum
> >>> hard drive size that it supports?
> >> Check for a "clip jumper" on the back of the drive. With
> >> IDE drives, one of the jumper positions limits drive size
> >> by a geometry trick. Use of that jumper, could result
> >> in seeing a 32GB sized drive.
>
> > I had used it in my other computer as a 120 GB drive, so that can't be
> > the problem.
>
> >> The FAQ page for older Asus motherboards is here. It looks like
> >> a 120GB drive should work.
>
> >>http://rma.asus.de/support/FAQ/faq076_32gb_ide_hdd.htm
>
> > I found the 1011.005 beta BIOS (5/13/2002) on the Asus web site, and
> > flashed it. In the BIOS, it still detected the drive as a 33.8 GB
> > drive.
>
> Did you move the jumpers around ? Double check the jumpers.
> If using cable select, try master/slave, or vice versa.
>
> If it won't work, you could try installing a PCI
> IDE card and use that instead.

Figured it out. I had the hard drive attached as a slave to a CDRW.
I made it the master, and the BIOS correctly detected it as a 120 GB
drive. Then fdisk in Windows 98 had a problem detecting it as a 48 GB
drive, but I found a Microsoft patch that fixes that bug in fdisk.