Re: OptiPlex GX400 BIOS A05 supports 48-bit LBA

William R. Walsh wrote:
Perhaps somewhat amazingly, the OptiPlex GX400 BIOS supports 48-bit
LBA. Not that anyone asked--now you know anyway.

I just plugged in a 250GB Western Digital hard disk, cloned Windows XP
from one drive to another using the Effitek PING* program (http://
ping.windowsdream.com/cgi-bin/download.pl).

The drive shows as the proper capacity in the A05 BIOS.

Makes the omission of 48-bit LBA from the Latitude D800 all that much
more curious...

William the Bored

* this actually seems to work quite well once you figure out just how
it is intended to work. I saw it mentioned on
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/03/16/netbook_backup_tools/) which
is a good start but doesn't tell you that your target drive needs to
be formatted and partitioned. PING can't seem to do that, so I
formatted the external 1TB USB hard drive as NTFS and it worked fine
to hold the image file that I later restored.

That PING software looks mighty interesting and useful. Thanks for the tip.

Omission of 48-bit LBA from the Latitude D800 might not be that
surprising if one assumes that Dell (or its ODMs) has different project
teams to "write" BIOSes for laptops, desktops, and servers. "Writing" a
BIOS is somewhat of a misnomer. Dell usually gets a working generic BIOS to go with a motherboard/chipset design, then customizes it with a Dell look-and-feel. The look-and-feel part is/was pretty standard among all product lines, but all the BIOS stuff deep down inside such as hard disk access, keyboard management, hibernate, CPU speedup (e.g. SpeedStep) etc. can all be different, and often must be to support specific hardware. Then, too, you have the differences in support for CPU and motherboard chipset between Intel and AMD.

You would think by now that there would be a little more standardization
of BIOS support than there is. However it really is a lot more standardized than it was in the last century when there were several BIOS companies, and some name brand companies (e.g. Compaq) went a little nuts with custom hardware that required BIOS mods... Ben Myers

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Relevant Pages

  • Re: OptiPlex GX400 BIOS A05 supports 48-bit LBA
    ... I just plugged in a 250GB Western Digital hard disk, ... The drive shows as the proper capacity in the A05 BIOS. ... Makes the omission of 48-bit LBA from the Latitude D800 all that much ... William the Bored ...
    (alt.sys.pc-clone.dell)
  • Re: [SLE] Re: GRUB hangs (was: PXE and GRUB install)
    ... >> Does your HD use LBA? ... Check in the BIOS. ... But how can I change my hard disk to another format? ... If pro is the opposite of con, ...
    (SuSE)
  • Re: Duel Booting w/ Suse 9.2 and Windows XP Pro
    ... > Did you try setting the harddrive to LBA mode in the Bios? ... > mode under which the hard disk was previously addressed for ...
    (alt.os.linux.suse)
  • Re: Do I have a virus?
    ... have to include reflashing EEPROMs with the proper code. ... most malware just lives on one's hard disk drive. ... any programs from outside of the known good media". ... system's architecture and BIOS and/or CMOS. ...
    (microsoft.public.security.virus)
  • Re: Question about OS/2 FDisk/BM pre/post FP13
    ... For instance, it was boot used while booted to a DOS, that won't work, because DOS itself requires Cylinders/Heads/Sectors, and does not use LBA. ... and logical partition type "F" support), which back then in 2002 was also named to be LBA capable, booted from my now finally working updated W4 Installation disks, using the /query command. ... But its result and my late test experience indicate, that the limiting factor still today is FDisk/BM, since quite obvious, it still cannot handle the BIOS' LBA mode. ... You have to exit fdisk in the middle to make it install the newer version or else it detects the existing one and neglects to reinstall it. ...
    (comp.os.os2.misc)