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    HDD Enclosures

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by lumberbunny, Sep 6, 2006.

  1. lumberbunny

    lumberbunny Notebook Evangelist

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    Here's a theoretical question:

    What determines how large a drive an enclosure is compatible with? That is, why can some enclosures use up to 300GB drives and others up to 400GB drives, etc?
     
    lumberbunny, Sep 6, 2006
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  2. burningrave101

    burningrave101 Notebook Deity

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    I would say that most likely it is just the chipset that the enclosure uses that determines that. The more expensive enclosures will likely have a better chipset that supports larger drives.
     
    burningrave101, Sep 6, 2006
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  3. lumberbunny

    lumberbunny Notebook Evangelist

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    Yeah, but then wouldn't it be an addressing issue? Where each addressing bit on the chipset would double the capacity, instead of having these arbitrary 200GB, 300GB, 400GB limitations?
     
    lumberbunny, Sep 6, 2006
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  4. Pitabred

    Pitabred Linux geek con rat flail!

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    It has to do with how the drive electronics are addressed. It's not just a case of adding another bit, really. Drives are MUCH more complicated than memory.
     
    Pitabred, Sep 6, 2006
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  5. Iter

    Iter Notebook Evangelist

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    All the hard drive enclousres can support up to 300GB, or more. Many favour brand have their website except the generic brand. The good idea is to find out which model you want and go to manufacturer website to check about the specification, or contact a technicial support for a help.
     
    Iter, Sep 7, 2006
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  6. lumberbunny

    lumberbunny Notebook Evangelist

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    Pita, can you go into more detail?
     
    lumberbunny, Sep 7, 2006
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  7. Pitabred

    Pitabred Linux geek con rat flail!

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    Well, defining hard drive size, there are sectors, and cylinders. It has to do with the "old" addressing scheme of drum drives and such. So you basically have an X-Y scheme of addressing a specific location on a hard drive. There are also newer schemes such as LBA and so on that allow you to address larger blocks at once.

    But basically, it's the chip in the drive controller that has to know how to talk to the drive, not Windows. And if the chip itself doesn't support the size of the drive, then there's nothing you can do software-wise to fix it really. There are some soft-bios hacks like EZBios that load off of drives at boot time and make large drives accessible on older hardware, but I don't know how that'd work on a laptop with an external drive, if at all. More than likely not. The main point is that the enclosure's drive controller chip HAS to support the size of the drive you want to put in it. Otherwise you'll get your big drive being treated like a much smaller one.
     
    Pitabred, Sep 8, 2006
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