Sometimes the motherboard BIOS can be updated to supprt larger HDs. And
some HD manufacturers provide overlay software, such as Maxtor's MaxBlast.

But in the end, it doesn't really matter. Worst case? You visit eBay and
get yourself a Promise Ultra100 (or Ultra66 is you want to save a couple
bucks) ATA PCI Controller card, problem solved. Heck, they can be had for
$10-20, shipped. In fact, when the larger HDs started hitting the market
several years ago, they often came w/ a FREE PCI controller. The HD
manufacturers knew lots of ppl would have support issues w/ their
motherboards. So they pre-empted the problem by providing the workaround,
the PCI card. They stopped doing this 2-3 yrs ago as large HD support
became more common w/ newer motherboards. But nothing stops you from
getting this same card off eBay.

In fact, for a few bucks more, you even get a Promise FastTrak100 TX2 RAID
Controller card instead, and add RAID support as well (if you're into that).
Will also serve as non-RAID PCI controller card too, of course.

Jim


<canids@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1133218417.241682.121800@g49g2000cwa.googlegr oups.com...
> We have a somewhat older computer - it's not archaic but it's not
> "new".
> We currently have a - newer than other bits - AOpen Ax34 Pentium III
> FCPGA 133MHz 4xAGP ATX *stops to take a breath* Motherboard, and
> roughly 40GB worth of disk-space between our two hard drives.
>
> It is almost full and we want more space... when I phoned the store,
> they said that our motherboard would not support any more than 40GB
> worth of hard drive, so I have two questions:
> 1. Were they telling the truth?
> 2. If we can't buy a larger hard drive, will we be able to hook up an
> external hard drive to get a bit more storage space?
>
> We are debating getting a new computer, but as this one still functions
> perfectly well, it seems like a waste if all we need is more disk
> space.
>
>
>
>
> ---Please excuse my Layman's (and probably inaccurate to boot)
> vocabulary... my father is the one who knows about computers but he
> refuses to look anything up himself.---
>