Does early SATA interface have drive size limit? I have this computer (made about 2004) I added the SATA interface card around 2006 or so. Yesterday I mount a 1TB drive to it and it...

BebuLamar

I have this computer (made about 2004) I added the SATA interface card around 2006 or so. Yesterday I mount a 1TB drive to it and it hang. The BIOS would recognize the drive but then hang right there and didn't go on. The drive is good as I mount it on the newer computer and it works fine. I mount a 500GB drive and it works. So I wonder since this card is old I think it's SATA 1 (it's an Adaptec card) and it has a size limit some how?

ecblackiii Loc: Maryland

It does that because of magnetic interference from the New Jersey Earthquake.

therwol Loc: USA

BebuLamar wrote:

I have this computer (made about 2004) I added the SATA interface card around 2006 or so. Yesterday I mount a 1TB drive to it and it hang. The BIOS would recognize the drive but then hang right there and didn't go on. The drive is good as I mount it on the newer computer and it works fine. I mount a 500GB drive and it works. So I wonder since this card is old I think it's SATA 1 (it's an Adaptec card) and it has a size limit some how?

I don't know if this helps. I'm on a 2007 Dell laptop. It was the first or second year of Dell putting an SATA interface in their laptops. I have a Samsung 1TB SSD in this thing with a dual boot configuration, Windows 7, 32 bit and Windows 10, 64 bit. Surprise, it runs both just fine. I won't go into all of the reasons why I hang onto this thing. Just look at the screenshots.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

BebuLamar wrote:

I have this computer (made about 2004) I added the SATA interface card around 2006 or so. Yesterday I mount a 1TB drive to it and it hang. The BIOS would recognize the drive but then hang right there and didn't go on. The drive is good as I mount it on the newer computer and it works fine. I mount a 500GB drive and it works. So I wonder since this card is old I think it's SATA 1 (it's an Adaptec card) and it has a size limit some how?

What OS and what file system?

BebuLamar

TriX wrote:

What OS and what file system?

No OS. The computer never went pass the BIOS stage.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

BebuLamar wrote:

No OS. The computer never went pass the BIOS stage.

Likely the BIOS (have you checked for an update) or the SATA card’s API/driver (check Adaptec) or both. The BIOS interacts with the disk API to load the OS. I’d look for the Adaptec instruction manual for the card. I’d also look to see if there are any jumpers on the card.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

TriX wrote:

Likely the BIOS (have you checked for an update) or the SATA card’s API/driver (check Adaptec) or both. The BIOS interacts with the disk API to load the OS. I’d look for the Adaptec instruction manual for the card. I’d also look to see if there are any jumpers on the card.

Forgot to add: in order for the BIOS to call the OS boot loader, it must first call the disk adapter’s API so it can access disk. I can’t speak for Adaptec SATA cards, but I have used/configured a LOT of Adaptec SCSI cards, and many have a jumper to automatically load the API during the BIOS - you can see it on the screen before the OS loads. Hence the reason for finding the Adaptec manual. And it may be that when the Adaptec card was released, there was no on card support for larger SATA drives, so worst case, you may need a new card, and that could be an issue in finding a driver for an old OS. I wonder if you partitioned the drive into two 500GB partitions, it would load?

therwol Loc: USA

BebuLamar wrote:

I have this computer (made about 2004) I added the SATA interface card around 2006 or so. Yesterday I mount a 1TB drive to it and it hang. The BIOS would recognize the drive but then hang right there and didn't go on. The drive is good as I mount it on the newer computer and it works fine. I mount a 500GB drive and it works. So I wonder since this card is old I think it's SATA 1 (it's an Adaptec card) and it has a size limit some how?

Are you putting this in a machine as a secondary drive or as the primary drive on which to install an OS? Is it new or did you take it out of a newer machine where it had been in use.

My 17 year old Dell laptop only supports drives with the MBR partition style. A drive taken out of a newer machine might have used GPT. This is how I found out. I cloned the old HDD of this computer using Macrium Reflect. (SATA to USB adaptor) The "new" drive had been taken out of another newer computer. The new drive had been initialized GPT. Reformatting the drive for the cloning did not change that. Macrium could see it, and I thought all was well. When I swapped the drives, the laptop could not see or read it. Booting gave a "No OS Found" error message. I converted the drive to MBR, cloned again, and all was well. I don't remember how I did it, but I believe you can do it from Windows installation media or on another computer that can see the drive. Google can tell you how.

Is this the problem? I don't know, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

BebuLamar

I delete the partition. The drive has no partition. It has nothing on it. It's installed as the boot drive. I am going to install an OS on it once the computer (not OS) recognizes the drive and goes thru the bios loading. I would boot it up with a USB thumb drive or CD to install the OS.

therwol Loc: USA

BebuLamar wrote:

I delete the partition. The drive has no partition. It has nothing on it. It's installed as the boot drive. I am going to install an OS on it once the computer (not OS) recognizes the drive and goes thru the bios loading. I would boot it up with a USB thumb drive or CD to install the OS.

I thought that deleting all partitions and reformatting "cleaned" the drive. It does not remove the partition style. Humor me. Connect the drive to a newer computer. In Disk Management, right click on the drive and choose properties. Then this. Do you see this? If you do, you need to change it to MBR. There is more than one method. Will this solve your problem? I don't know, but it might.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

BebuLamar wrote:

I delete the partition. The drive has no partition. It has nothing on it. It's installed as the boot drive. I am going to install an OS on it once the computer (not OS) recognizes the drive and goes thru the bios loading. I would boot it up with a USB thumb drive or CD to install the OS.

Have you set the BIOS to boot from USB? If you have, it should boot whether or not it recognizes the drive. If in doubt, unplug the drive, boot from USB, install the OS from USB, and then add the drive. Therwol’s suggestion could also be correct - GPT is fairly recent, and a BIOS looking for MBR won’t “understand” GPT/UEFI

BebuLamar

TriX wrote:

Have you set the BIOS to boot from USB? If you have, it should boot whether or not it recognizes the drive. If in doubt, unplug the drive, boot from USB, install the OS from USB, and then add the drive. Therwol’s suggestion could also be correct - GPT is fairly recent, and a BIOS looking for MBR won’t “understand” GPT/UEFI

It boots with the USB drive if I have no HDD or I have the 500GB HDD installed. With the 1TB HDD it hang during loading the BIOS. The controller BIOS recognize the drive model number but it hangs there.
With the 500GB drive it would display the HDD number as drive 1 and then the CD/DVD drive as drive 2 and then it goes to boot. With the 1TB drive it just display the 1TB drive number as drive 1 then hangs. It doesn't display the CD/DVD drive and thus no booting.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

BebuLamar wrote:

It boots with the USB drive if I have no HDD or I have the 500GB HDD installed. With the 1TB HDD it hang during loading the BIOS. The controller BIOS recognize the drive model number but it hangs there.
With the 500GB drive it would display the HDD number as drive 1 and then the CD/DVD drive as drive 2 and then it goes to boot. With the 1TB drive it just display the 1TB drive number as drive 1 then hangs. It doesn't display the CD/DVD drive and thus no booting.

So what about booting up and then adding the drive (you can hot plug a SATA drive).

therwol Loc: USA

TriX wrote:

Therwol’s suggestion could also be correct - GPT is fairly recent, and a BIOS looking for MBR won’t “understand” GPT/UEFI

He's trying to use this drive in a 20 year old machine. If he's using a drive that was initialized GPT, he won't get very far. I'm just asking him to check. There may be other issues as well. I don't know about all of the operating systems, but Windows 10/11 automatically initialize new drives to GPT and also during the installation of Windows.

BebuLamar

therwol wrote:

I thought that deleting all partitions and reformatting "cleaned" the drive. It does not remove the partition style. Humor me. Connect the drive to a newer computer. In Disk Management, right click on the drive and choose properties. Then this. Do you see this? If you do, you need to change it to MBR. There is more than one method. Will this solve your problem? I don't know, but it might.

I mount the drive on a Win10 computer and it said Master Boot Record.