Dear Dave,

I have followed this thread with interest since I faced the same issue about 2
months ago upgrading my old Maxtor 340 HD to a WD 3.2G.

>The saga continues I need advice on how to finish this project.  Trying to
install a >6.4 Western Digital hard drive.  The first hard drive I bought was
defective and it >turns out that my BIOS does not support larger drives.  It
only recognized it as >being a 2.1 GB drive.

My older BIOS only supported LBA up to the 2.1 GB DOS limit.  I couldn't
upgrade the motherboard because my mini compact 486 is not upgradable as far as
the mobo is concerned and the BIOS was not upgrading according to MR. BIOS and
the computer manufacturer [ACER].

I could have used EZDRIVE which would have worked but has its limitations as
previously noted in other posts or I could install a EIDE BIOS extension.  I
still had an empty ISA slot so the ISA EIDE-BIOS extension card went in the
empty slot.  If you can not free up an ISA slot there are also PCI EIDE cards
available that will support up to 4 HD up to 8.4 GB.

The ISA card that I chose is from DATA TECHNOLOGY CORP. DTC 1181
[datatechnology.com] and only cost $21.99 plus shipping.  It has a selectable
address space in upper memory between C800h and DC00h.  They also feature PCI
EIDE controller cards that support the large capacity drives.  I orderd the
card through LYBEN [lyben.com].

Although a new MOBO would be a great upgrade, the EIDE card is the easier and
cheaper solution.  Plus your partitioned and formated drive will be compatible
in the future rather than being stuck with the EZDRIVE overlay....requires
wiping the drive clean [repartitioning] to remove it.

Regards John