aha 3940auw question - Tech Support Forums

dmanlyr · December 7th, 2001, 12:16 AM

Does anyone know the hard drive size limit of the bios on this SCSI controller? It seems that Adaptec makes this information hard to find. Thanks!

Peter M · December 7th, 2001, 05:12 AM

SCSI allows a 32-bit sector count, with DOS compatible 512-byte-sectored drives your limit is 2^41 bytes or 2 Terabytes. That should do for a while

regards, Peter

dmanlyr · December 7th, 2001, 11:10 AM

Peter, I understand the limits of SCSI as it is written, however I am looking for the actual limits of the bios as it is written on the Adaptec card. I know from Adaptec's own information that the older Adaptec 2940 controller will only support a maximum hard drive size of 7.88gig, regardless of the SCSI limit of 2 Terabytes. I just cannot find that information on the 3940 & I was hoping to find out what size Adaptec limited these 3940 cards to before I go out and purchase to large of a hard drive.

Thanks!

Peter M · December 7th, 2001, 02:27 PM

On the BIOS drive support side, you either have support for up to 7.8 GBytes (standard Int 13h API) or above (extended Int 13h API). The extended interface uses 48-bit sector numbers IIRC.

regards, Peter

dmanlyr · December 8th, 2001, 02:52 AM

Thanks Peter. This answered my question.