March 2, 1998
New, big hard drives prove that PC hardware limitations just won't go away
By Bob O'Donnell
One of the immutable laws of personal computing is that you can never have too much
storage space. So, it's not surprising that there's always a great deal of interest in
new, big hard drives nor that one of the most popular ways to upgrade a computer is to
install a larger capacity drive.
Unfortunately, many users who try to upgrade to one of the latest big drive offerings,
such as the 11.5GB drive introduced by Maxtor last week -- or any drive larger than 8.4GB
-- may be in for an unpleasant surprise: These drives may not work in their PCs.
The problem is that most computer BIOSes cannot recognize IDE drives larger than 8.4GB
(most SCSI drives and controllers don't have this limitation). In addition, older
operating systems (such as DOS 6.22, Windows 3.1 and Windows NT 3.5.1) cannot work with
drives of this size and, according to information on the Maxtor site, will not be revved
to provide this support.
Installing drives larger than 8.4GB in a system with a BIOS that has not been upgraded
can cause a host of different problems, ranging from an inability to "see" the
drive, to data-corruption problems and more.
In many cases the limitation can be removed by upgrading the BIOS and/or hard-drive
controller, or by using drive-overlay software, such as OnTrack's Disk
Manager or Maxtor's own MaxBlast. Yet,
this may not solve all your problems, as a recent article
in the Microsoft Knowledge Base explains.
Now, if this problem sounds awfully familiar to many of you, it should. It's related to
the infamous 504MB-drive limitation that many people suffered through just a few years ago
(and which, frankly, some people are still dealing with today). Specifically, it has to do
with the Int13h extensions to the BIOS and the way that the BIOS and hard-drive controller
talk to the hard drive. (For more specific technical information, check out this white paper on Maxtor's Web site.)
Ironically, it appears that the Logical Block Addressing (LBA) "fix" to the
504MB problem imposed its own new ceiling at 8.4GB. Admittedly, it's in hindsight, but
that sure seems like a shortsighted fix to me.
Of course, the history of computing is riddled with examples of technical
shortsightedness, many of which continue to hound us: The 640KB memory limit, the
previously mentioned 504MB (or 528 MB -- depending upon how you count your megabytes)
hard-disk limit, the 2.1GB volume-partition limit, and the 16 Interrupt Request (IRQ)
limit (see my previous column
for more) are just a few examples of confounding limits.
Taken together, these design limitations form a never-ending chain of obscure technical
constraints that today's PC designs impose upon us. And, unfortunately, I have no doubt
that we'll be facing more of these kinds of issues in the near future.
The situation is so bad that the word "legacy" -- which has powerful,
positive connotations for most people outside the computer industry -- has become one of
the most dreaded words computer users can ever hear. Instead of implying a historical
gift, as the dictionary defines it, a computer legacy implies shackles that we're forced
to live with and work around.
I have to admit that I don't get it: How is it that PC hardware seems unable to break
away from a series of inane barriers that do nothing but add unnecessary hassles to our
computing lives? You'd think that with all the brainpower employed by the computer
industry, somebody would be able to figure out a way to solve these types of issues in a
technically elegant manner. Instead, it seems all we ever get are kludgy patches to fix
previous patches.
At some point, someone or some company has to step forward with a better solution. I
just hope it's sooner rather than later.
Copyright 1998, by InfoWorld Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of IDG Communications,
Inc. Reprinted from InfoWorld, 155 Bovet Road, San
Mateo, CA 94402. Further reproduction is prohibited.
