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Epox MVPC2 and 160GB Hard Drive?

Posted: Sun Nov 18, 2007 2:18 am
by BuonaDomenica
Hi,

I have an old Epox MVPC2 with an AMD K62+ 550Mhz and would like to upgrade my Hard drive to 160GB. Currently there is a 60GB drive in there and its ready to die.

If I would partition the drive to two 80GB partitions would they be recognized by the bios or XP Pro?

I'm not ready to retire this system as it is ok for email and web browsing under Windows XP Pro SP2with 512MB of Ram.

However, when I do Windows update it takes forever to serach for the updates and CPU usage is 100%.

thanks for the input on the 160GB drive.

BD

Posted: Sun Nov 18, 2007 3:55 am
by kalabok
hello,

i have the same board and, well, the best bios for it only supports 120gb drives. if you connect the hdd to the mainboard, the bios will stuck trying to detect it correctly. sorry, man, you can make 160 1gb partitions, but as the computer wouldnt recognize the drive itself, it will simply not work even in xp.

what you can do is getting an ata-card. udma133 - you will feel it.

Posted: Sun Nov 18, 2007 7:43 am
by KachiWachi
Though the System BIOS *may* not recognize the full capacity of the HDD, Windows will.

Thanks.


Ref: http://www.48bitlba.com/

Posted: Sun Nov 18, 2007 1:11 pm
by BuonaDomenica
thank you for the replies.

I thought the Bios would at least detect the 160GB drive as a 120GB. If the Bios just keeps searching during the post screen when a 160GB drive is connected I will not bother with that then. too bad.

Has anyone tried to install a Serial ATA card with a Serial ATA Hard drive and booted from that? If I have to get an ad-on card I might as well get Serial ATA since those drive are more available then regular ATA drives now. Also SATA might be a little faster too.

not sure if I should sink anymore money into this system since the processor is not that fast.

The cheapest SATA card goes for about $20 shipped from Newegg.

Posted: Sun Nov 18, 2007 2:06 pm
by kalabok
i have a siig combo card installed with usb 2.0, firewire, pata and sata I interface on it. i installed a wd 320gb hdd with no problems. for booting from that drive you have to choose the scsi boot device option.

Posted: Sun Nov 18, 2007 2:36 pm
by BuonaDomenica
did you have any trouble installing Windows from the SATA card?

could you please post a link to that card as I'm thinking of getting one of those too.

did your system performance improve a little after installing the SATA hard drive?

what are your specs of your system?

thanks

Posted: Sun Nov 18, 2007 2:57 pm
by kalabok
i used this card:

http://www.siig.com/ViewProduct.aspx?pn=SC-UNSP12

no problems installing windows, the controller recognized the drive properly.
i have not got the feeling, windows is loading and running faster, but transfering files is performing much better. testing the drive with hdtach gives quite same results as same drive in a P4 system.

currently this system is not running, but i was using a k6 2+ @ 616mhz and 448mb ram for winxp sp1.

Posted: Sun Nov 18, 2007 3:51 pm
by BuonaDomenica
is your 320GB drive IDE or Serial ATA? Yes with IDE Windows will just pick up the driver. I think with serial ATA one has to use a floppy disk and press F6 during install to load the driver.

thanks for the link to the card

Posted: Sun Nov 18, 2007 4:02 pm
by kalabok
its an 320gb ide drive. about the f6 in windows - ive never done it. but you can be the first to try that out ;)

Posted: Mon Nov 19, 2007 6:29 am
by KachiWachi
@kalabok -

What are your HD Tach numbers?

@BuonaDomenica -

IIRC, you need to put the 32 GB clip on the drive for it to be recognized...but don't quote me on this.

Thanks.

Posted: Mon Nov 19, 2007 10:13 am
by kalabok
sorry, kachiwachi,

i do not remember the numbers for the WD 320gb ide drive, cause i did few tests for a friend, which i bought the drive for. i did some more tests with a maxtor 120gb 6Y120L0 drive and that one got about 84MB/s avarage read and about 9ms access time.
as i said, currently the system is not running. another thing is - i screwed up that drive. connected 19V powerconnector to an usb external case, where this drive was inside. loud shout and ... silence.
i hope for reincarnation

Posted: Mon Nov 19, 2007 7:26 pm
by BuonaDomenica
well I got a 160GB SATA Drive and orderd a Serial ATA card. I will post back on how this combo will work. I slipstreamed the Serial ATA drivers into Windows XP and hope the installation will go smoothly.

BD

btw. does anybody has the Manual of the Epox MVPC2 as I can't download it from the Epox site. I always get page can't be displayed. I have tried several times over the last few days.

thanks

Posted: Tue Nov 20, 2007 2:27 am
by Stedman5040
Just downloaded the manual from this link

www.cccc.edu/instruction/slympany/Links/MVP3C2.pdf

Stedman :wink:

Posted: Tue Nov 20, 2007 1:02 pm
by BuonaDomenica
thank you for the link to the manual.

Posted: Fri Dec 07, 2007 9:19 am
by DonPedro
BuonaDomenica,

have you installed the card meanwhile? if so let us know your experience and also give us some benchnumbers.

a very handy and small hd-test program is dskbench. needs no installation, just opens a cmd-window and tells you about read/write sequential and block scores. also tells cpu-usage. you can download it here