Abit KV-85 large hard drive (1.5TB) support??

[ohman]

Hi all:

I have a old Abit KV-85 motherboard which I have been using for years. Recently the original hard drive (320GB) seem to be acting up (can not boot anymore, but the data are still there), so I purchased a new 1.5TB hard drive (Western Digital Caviar Green WD15EARS 1.5TB SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive) from newegg in the hope to replace it. However, after I connected the hard drive, the BIOS doesn't seem to be able to recognize this hard drive. My questions:

1. Does this sound like I'm having a older BIOS problem and if I upgrade to the latest version of BIOS, I should be able to resolve this issue?
2. How could I check what version number of BIOS that I have on this motherboard?

Thanks!

[spoon_]

1. You should have the latest BIOS available anyway.
2. Get into BIOS by pressing either DEL or F2 during bootup and check in the very first screen.

Failing that press PAUSE key during POST to check.

[ohman]

Should a large hard drive like this (1.5TB) be supported by a KV-85 though? Just want to confirm... Based on all the BIOS revision history I did not see any changes made for supporting large hard drive, that's why I was NOT sure whether by upgrading BIOS it would resolve this problem (or maybe I simply got a defective hard drive that can NOT be detected?? I don't have another PC to verify this though).... thanks!

[ABIT Sean]

Should a large hard drive like this (1.5TB) be supported by a KV-85 though? Just want to confirm... Based on all the BIOS revision history I did not see any changes made for supporting large hard drive, that's why I was NOT sure whether by upgrading BIOS it would resolve this problem (or maybe I simply got a defective hard drive that can NOT be detected?? I don't have another PC to verify this though).... thanks!

The size of the drive is not the problem its the speed. The KV-85 only supports SATA 150 but the WD15EARS is SATA 300 drive.

Unless you can change the speed the drive will not work.

[ohman]

The size of the drive is not the problem its the speed. The KV-85 only supports SATA 150 but the WD15EARS is SATA 300 drive.

Unless you can change the speed the drive will not work.

Thanks so much for your reply!! I really appreciate that!!

So would this one work then??

Western Digital VelociRaptor WD1500HLFS 150GB 10000 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive

Also for those hard drive that marked as SATA 3.0GB/s are they all considered as SATA 300 drives?? For those SATA 300 drives, do they usually have a jumper that I could switch from SATA 300 to SATA 150?

Thanks!

[ABIT Sean]

Thanks so much for your reply!! I really appreciate that!!

So would this one work then??

Western Digital VelociRaptor WD1500HLFS 150GB 10000 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive

Also for those hard drive that marked as SATA 3.0GB/s are they all considered as SATA 300 drives?? For those SATA 300 drives, do they usually have a jumper that I could switch from SATA 300 to SATA 150?

Thanks!

Yes SATA 300 refers to the speed, so it would be a 3.0GB/s drive. In the past all SATA hard drive could switch to 1.5GB/s by using either a jumper or software from the manufacturer.

WD drives use a jumper to set transfer rates. If place a jumper on pins 5-6 it will set the drive to SATA150.

Take a look at the WD website for more information.

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc....7%2C294#jumper

hope this helps.