Hmm, I went to double check and actually this MB
does have USB.... 1.x [sarcasm]Yay.[/sarcasm]
IsaacKuo wrote:The problem is that the hardware won't be able to do any sort of LBA. My experience with my P120 is that it simply can't deal with any hard drive bigger than 2gigs in size, period. Linux or Windows, it doesn't matter. It just can't do it.
Neither Linux nor *BSD use the BIOS to communicate with the IDE controller, so they can bypass artifical BIOS limitations. However, they can't magically make the IDE controller capable of LBA or double-pumping if the hardware simply lacks the capability.
Okay I just got done doing some heavy duty research (again) on this issue just to confirm that I wasn't having delusions or something since it
was pretty late when I looked into this. The more I read up on this the more I am convinced that, barring some software incompatability or the HD's compatability with ATA/33, this might actually work....
First I read up on LBA and the issue that arises between hard drive addressing limitations and how LBA is involved. It turns out that any hard drive larger than 528MB will require LBA already. Cracking open my MB manual shows that it does support LBA functionality. Checking out some of the various internet sources seemed to indicate that LBA support is mainly a BIOS and OS issue, not hardware (other than the HD itself). While they tend to be slightly Windows-centric these pages all mention this and don't seem to say IDE controllers are limiting:
Link
48bitlba.com
These Samsung pages make for interesting reading too. This one goes over a few of the
various HD size recognition limits.. This page goes over the concept of LBA and a dynamic drive overlay (DDO) a little:
Link. This file
137gb.pdf from Seagate seems telling in the way it words its description of the BIOS's role and how a DDO gets around the size limit:
....The system BIOS auto-detects the hard disc drive and issues an inquiry to get the drive's number of LBAs. The largest number it is prepared to receive may be 137GB. In this case you might check with your system manufacturer for a BIOS upgrade. Many namebrand systems have the ability to "flash" the BIOS with new firmware. This process varies in difficulty and is optional.
Alternatively, BIOS support for ATA>137GB can also be accomplished by putting the necessary boot code on the disc drive itself. This small bit of programming emulates the BIOS support so that when the higher-level operating system drivers begin to launch they can "see" the full potential capacity of the drive. Seagate provides hard disc installation software called DiscWizard to help with this task. DiscWizard writes boot code called a DDO on discs that do not have native BIOS support for the full capacity of the drive. DiscWizard only writes the DDO when required.
Note: It is a common misconception that the DDO is some kind of memory resident program or that it has the potential to slow disc access by being in memory. Like all BIOS routines, the DDO is discarded from memory after about 5 seconds into the launch of the operating system when the 32-bit direct access device drivers take over. The DDO exists only to detect and then present the full capacity of the disc drive to these operating system device drivers.
I failed to find much in the way of authoratative point-blank statements that these NAS programs will definitely mesh ancient hardware and large capacity hard drives, but there is this claim from the NASLite product page I linked earlier:
For example, with NASLite v1.x you can take a retired Pentium 200MHz computer, remove the old fixed disk drives, CD-ROMs, etc., install four 160GB fixed disk drives and have a fast, reliable 640GB NASLite v1.x file server for the cost of the fixed disk drives.
A 200MHz P1 system has
got to be pre-48-bit LBA and about the same hardware vintage as my computer is.
Since 48-bit LBA didn't become standard until ATA/100 (ATA-6) did, I tried looking for some examples of people using NASLite and big HDs on old ATA33/66 systems that should also be limited to <137GB by their hardware or BIOSes. No one seems to mention using IDE controller cards either:
Some people's hardware. The guy in the second post uses my exact chipset.
Some more (first page only)
Pg 2 of another thread
Terabyte server (Translated from German) Running off a 440BX (ATA/66) MB.
Oh yes, I almost forgot to mention I came across a (modded?) BIOS update for my ancient MB floating around the internet that reportedly allows it to recognize drives up to the 137GB limit. I take this as a good sign that over 137GB may not be out of reach because surely 137GB must be much higher than what the MB was originally designed for....