Trying to break the 137GB HDD limit

[Old School]

Hi all,
I recently bought an Addonics Adsaide ide to sata adapter. Addonics says this adapter can:
Convert any Serial ATA hard drive or Serial ATA storage device into IDE hard drive or ATAPI devices
Support ATA 33/66/100/133
48 bits LBA. Support large hard drives of 137 GB or larger with one partition
Mount directly to the back of SATA hard drive
Bootable
Simple plug and play, no drivers required
Compatible with any OS (Windows, DOS, Mac, Linux, UNIX..) that supports IDE or ATAPI storage devices
Supports Spread Spectrum in receiver
Compliant with ATA specifications
Input: combo SATA 15-pin power and 7-pin data connector (direct attach to SATA hard drive)
Output: 40-pin IDE male connector (work with standard IDE connecting cable). They advertise that this adapter can break the 137GB HDD limit for older equipment.

Currently we can recognize HDD's bigger than this, but only use up to 137GB of the drive, the rest is wasted space.

I cloned my internal ide drive to a 500GB sata hard drive and installed it using this adapter. The HDR recognizes the sata drive, but as having only 137GB, and boots all almost all the way before it hangs after checking DMI.

I think the device may not be working because plug and play is not enabled in the bios, but I'm afraid to try enabling it for fear it may reallocate irq resources and overwrite the new configuration to the bios possibly ruining my machine. But I'm out of my element here and not sure if any of what I am saying is correct. If any of you have any ideas I would be eternally grateful.

Have a blessed day,
Mike W.

[funk]

hi mike,
i dont think enabling the plug and play will do any damage, lets see just in case what others say,
reg the external drive only. im not sure what is going on when i say this, but my 2 hdr's are both using 160g drives in the external drive bay, in fact nearly all of my backup drives are 160g and wait for it one is a 250 g drive that also works, but wont see other 250g drives very strange, there are no cap limit jumpers on any of these drives, what i need to do as a test is max one out by saving a load of stuff on it, just re name a massive project and multi save it till it stops or the hdr reports it as full, then hook it up to a pc to see how much of it is used. keep you posted

[doktor1360]

Hi all,
I recently bought an Addonics Adsaide ide to sata adapter. Addonics says this adapter can:
Convert any Serial ATA hard drive or Serial ATA storage device into IDE hard drive or ATAPI devices
Support ATA 33/66/100/133
48 bits LBA. Support large hard drives of 137 GB or larger with one partition
Mount directly to the back of SATA hard drive
Bootable
Simple plug and play, no drivers required
Compatible with any OS (Windows, DOS, Mac, Linux, UNIX..) that supports IDE or ATAPI storage devices
Supports Spread Spectrum in receiver
Compliant with ATA specifications
Input: combo SATA 15-pin power and 7-pin data connector (direct attach to SATA hard drive)
Output: 40-pin IDE male connector (work with standard IDE connecting cable). They advertise that this adapter can break the 137GB HDD limit for older equipment.

Currently we can recognize HDD's bigger than this, but only use up to 137GB of the drive, the rest is wasted space.

I cloned my internal ide drive to a 500GB sata hard drive and installed it using this adapter. The HDR recognizes the sata drive, but as having only 137GB, and boots all almost all the way before it hangs after checking DMI.

I think the device may not be working because plug and play is not enabled in the bios, but I'm afraid to try enabling it for fear it may reallocate irq resources and overwrite the new configuration to the bios possibly ruining my machine. But I'm out of my element here and not sure if any of what I am saying is correct. If any of you have any ideas I would be eternally grateful.

Have a blessed day,
Mike W.

Hey Mike (and Funk, too)... trust all is well...

That's probably gonna be a 'Show-Stopper', man... supporting larger drives is an issue that's reliant upon the operating system (Windows 95 - i.e. the Mackie OS) at the kernel level for starters. Windows 95 does not properly support drives larger than 32GB without a high probability for data corruption... that's BIOS related as well. They work together, but ultimately it's the BIOS that sets it up (hardware n BIOS code) and then Windows will manage what's there as reported by BIOS. Mackie addressed this to the current limitations (at the time) of the hardware with the 1.4 OS release and subsequent BIOS chip firmware upgrade. This is all due to the addressing system employed and bit depth support therein (28-bit vs 48-bit for LBA). It's a hard limitation at the issue core, one that doesn't appear to be resolvable. The BIOS code, operating system drivers and the Windows Registry are all part of what would be in play here. and there's also no avenue to resolve this without the BIOS and operating system source code base. The Mackie engineers don't provide a terminal for any hope of getting access to an MS-DOS prompt for driver installation and/or Registry issue mitigation either. It's quite messy, and giving me a headache even thinking about what's theoretically involved (LOL)...

The hardware will 'work', but only within the limitations of the driver, firmware and operating system code... albeit not supporting all the hardware specifications per se. Sadly, none of this exists within the 'User-Land', only to the developers. If y'all can get things working, I tip my hat to ya... I personally just don't see how - just a lot a frustration...

But again, you knew this was coming, so...
[Standard Mgmt Disclaimer] - "Your actual mileage may vary..."

All the best with this, I'd be interested in the result of your experience...

Peace \m/

[Old School]

Hey Dok,
Funny you should post on this now, as just the other day I ran across something that gives a glimmer of hope. The asaide gear didn't work, probably for the reasons you listed, but I found a patch for windows 95 and 98 systems that can be flashed to the bios through dos.
I had PM'd Mike Rivers some time ago about this and he told me that the HDR was not written on a windows platform and he didn't think I could boot into dos. Well maybe his health was already failing at that point because just last week I was cleaning out some files and stumbled across his "last Mackie Hard Drive Manual" and in it, he details how to boot into dos with a windows 95 boot disk, so it IS written on a windows platform. I have a spare HDR and as soon as I get a break ( my studio workload is heavy right now) I'm gonna give it a shot. Wish me luck! Like the man said "you won't know until you try"!

Have a blessed day,
Mike

[Y-my-R]

I don't know what the HDR's OS is based on... but if you can boot from a DOS floppy, it only means that the HDR hardware is compatible with DOS (which isn't surprising, since it's a standard PC mainboard etc.).

It doesn't mean that the OS on the harddrive is DOS/Windows based, though. You're not booting from that, when using a DOS floppy.
For all it's worth... you could be booting the same hardware with a UNIX/Linux variant, that should also be compatible with PC hardware like that... so "in theory" the HDR OS could be based on "something else".
(But I guess if Mike Rivers DID point out that it is based on Windows in his book, then it must be true... I've never seen that book).

To make my point, though: You could remove the internal harddrive completely, and STILL boot from a DOS floppy... so, that has nothing to do with the OS installed on the harddrive that the HDR usually boots from.

As for the harddrive size limit... I have no idea. I have the large BIOS installed but only recently got a SSD drive to work in a new/different drive-bay for the first time, but that one's only 120 GB. Still thrilled that I can finally use a (quiet) SSD with the HDR and boot it off of a CF card for the OS... MUCH quieter than before.
(Thanks again, Doktor1360! Your list of components and that new/different drive bay made that possible!)

I don't have a large spare SSD I could try with right now... if I'll come across one, I'll stick it into that new drive bay and will try it with my HDR