[Gllug] Upgrade hard disk & install Fedora

[lesleyb at herlug.org.uk]

On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 12:05:11AM +0100, gvimrc wrote:
> I have an Acer Travelmate 290, which originally came with a 30Gb IDE hard drive. I'm thinking of upgrading the hard drive to 160Gb or even a 250Gb then installing Fedora 11 but wonder if all of it would be visible. I've looked up the notes on the last BIOS revision (2.0) but it doesn't say anything disk size limits. Could Fedora override any BIOS limits like this or does the BIOS take priority?
> 
http://www.acersupport.com/notebook/html/tm290_dl.html indicates v1.6 of the BIOS for TravelMate 290 in 2003.
I'm not familiar with Acer but if they haven't rebadged the BIOS have you tried searching on that to see if there is a limit?
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Large-Disk-HOWTO.html#toc4 is dated 2004.
http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/hard_drive_size_barriers.htm might also help.  The author indicates the first 160GB drive came out in October 2001.

Data storage in the user manual (available at http://www.acerpanam.com/synapse/data/7117/documents/tm290ug.pdf ) indicates it's an EIDE.  Not sure if that is related.

I'd be tempted to try so long as I wasn't worried about losing money on it if it didn't work.
Depends if you think you have use for a 160/250GB EIDE laptop drive outside the planned environment or not and whether you want to potentially throw away 23/113GB .
Worst case scenario is you buy the new disk on the basis that if it works you'll keep it - otherwise you will be sending the drive back and wanting a refund.

Sorry I can't be of more help.
Regards

L.


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