SATA PCI card on an old system

[ahmahmahm]

Hopefully a quick one. I've an old HP PC which is hopeless with newer IDE disks. It locks up during POST if I put a disk bigger than 30GB into it. So, it's happily running with a 20GB disk.

If I stick a SATA PCI card in it, I'm assuming (hoping!) that this will be entirely separate from the PC's own BIOS, and will therefore be happy with a nice 320GB job or something.

I know I should just try it, but I haven't bought the new card and disk yet, and so it would be nice to know if anyone else has tried this kind of thing, or has any experience.

The PC is an HP Vectra VE with something like a 700MHz PIII and 384MB in it.

cheers, Andy

[directhex]

ought to be fine

i've used massive disks on an old pentium 166 with a pci cohntroller

just remember windows will require you to use a driver floppy in order to install

[FatalSaviour]

What drive manufacturer is it? Some manufacturer's provide utilities that will spoof the BIOS into thinking it's only a 20GB HD, when it's not.
Failing that, as long as the BIOS support booting via a separate controller (check this first if poss), you should be fine.

[ahmahmahm]

Thanks for the replies.

Even using the drive manufacturer software to fool the BIOS, the PC still hangs. :-)

I'm planning to keep the 20GB as the boot / OS drive, and use the other drive for extra storage, so I should be OK.

cheers