Thank you for correct me on ASUS BIOS issue. However, there are few things I can't find any match with my exp, hope you can "fix" me on the following too, I'm looking forward to hear from you. In my memory (I worked as service person before), the worst damaged harddisk was a 10G (I think, maybe bigger) had been used as a 8G drive, it only lasted a few days, there were 4G-6G hard drives had been damaged by old mobo that only support upto 2G in BIOS (however they lasted months). I see the risk is pretty big, I don't want bet on it anyway. I also had trouble to fix wrongly "partitioned" drive, either new BIOS and MS Fdisk (from win98, tried NT4 with SP4 IDE fix too) couldn't correct the size of disk even I deleted partition, reboot, re-partition, none of standard way worked for me. The only way I had successfully corrected the problem was utility provided by HDD manufacturers. If you have detailed guide on how to fix this kind of problem, please post here, I'd happy to learn any new tips. Since most BIOS I dealed later have no problem with large HDD, maybe things changed, let me know if you know how could BIOS damage HDD, and how new HDD is desinged to avoid the problem. Thanks. I only give low risk suggestion, so if anything I don't risk myself, I don't want to anyone else to risk it. I believe this old says from China: if you do not want yourself, do not give/do it to others. Jun Qian ----- Original Message ----- From: "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Wednesday, December 13, 2000 8:18 PM Subject: Re: [PCBUILD] PCBUILD Digest - Re: New HD installation I'm a bit uncertain about this last point but I have seen quite a few 10GBs installed clipped for an 8GB limit and a 35GB or 40GB installed "clipped" to 32GB. On reuse to full capacity in another computer no ill affects but usually had to use a utility to write zeros to much of the drive. Also the drive mfgrs website might reveal special jumpering for limiting drive size to less than full capacity. I think most hard drives over 8Gb probably take care of their landing zone by onboard firmware. I bet the "physical damage" JQ he has seen were with HDs forced to the old BIOS limits of 2 and 4GB limits or maybe even the old 512MB limit. Some drives of that era COULD be damaged that way but drive manufacturers have probably wised up and now design to avoid physical damage. As for the evils of disk overlay software that comes with the drive or is licenced (and often renamed!) by the HD mfgr like EZBIOS, Ontrack Data Manager etc. .. This does actually work well to allow hard drives over BIOS limits and pretty good reliably too but it IS a royal pain to remove to put the drive in another system especially if you want to transfer your data off first. So if you possibly can do avoid it as Jun Quin suggests. >(unless you use "special program >>come with them", which I won't use for myself no matter how/when - unless >>someone point a gun to my head ...) Do you want to signoff PCBUILD or just change to Digest mode - visit our web site: http://nospin.com/pc/pcbuild.html