Toshiba Satellite Pro 405CS hard disk size limit \ VOGONS

Toshiba Satellite Pro 405CS hard disk size limit

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First post, by dylanrush

Posted on 2025-06-26, 03:53

dylanrush Offline

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Hi Vogons, I have a Toshiba Satellite Pro 405CS that I've been babying. I've recapped the whiny backlight inverter, replaced the CMOS battery, fixed the nipple mouse, upgraded the RAM to a hefty 40MB, and decked it out with a nice DOS/ win 3.1 / win 95 tri-boot install. It's my favorite laptop in my collection and one of my favorite computers.

I am using a common SD/IDE adapter which seems to only want to support cards up to 4GB. If I put in a larger SD card the whole system seems to choke up - won't find a bootable volume, etc. 4GB is okay, and would have been astronomical back in the day, but I do want to put more games on there.

Most likely, this laptop's hard drive controller doesn't support larger drives, right? I can't imagine that the adapter has this limitation.

I do have an IDE/USB adapter so maybe I'll plug my SD/IDE adapter into that and see if a modern computer can detect a 32GB SD card. I may also buy an actual 2.5 inch, 80gb hard drive from eBay for $7 to see what it can do (probably nothing)

I also have a PCMCIA/CF adapter and that seems to only go up to 2GB.

Any ideas on how I might get the computer to recognize a larger drive?

Reply 1 of 4, by MikeSG

Posted on 2025-06-26, 11:23

MikeSG Offline

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SD cards are a serial type bus compared to the parallel type IDE & compact flash cards, so SD cards have a speed limit.

The BIOS needs to detect a FAT32 drive if you want more than 4GB (?) ... If that's not possible you're stuck to 2GB or 4GB. But you could always just add extra drives?

Reply 2 of 4, by Truffon

Posted on 2025-06-26, 12:34

Truffon Offline

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You could try Ontrack (different versions available on Phil's Computer Lab website)
I managed to boot my 486 (limited to 2GB hard disks in bios) on a 40GB HDD after setting it up (limited to a 2GB FAT16 partition for MS-DOS 6.22 obviously).

I never tried on a SD card though, but worth trying IMO.
It's easy and quick to set up.

Reply 3 of 4, by dylanrush

Posted on 2025-06-26, 16:30

dylanrush Offline

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MikeSG wrote on 2025-06-26, 11:23:

SD cards are a serial type bus compared to the parallel type IDE & compact flash cards, so SD cards have a speed limit.

The BIOS needs to detect a FAT32 drive if you want more than 4GB (?) ... If that's not possible you're stuck to 2GB or 4GB. But you could always just add extra drives?

Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think a BIOS from 1995 will have any notion of FAT16 vs FAT32 or even a partition table.

But no matter what kind of file system I use, FAT32 or even if I put a 2gb fat16 partition on a 32gb card, the laptop still has trouble with any card over 4gb.

How do you suggest adding extra drives to the laptop? This is interesting, I wonder if the hard drive controller would somehow allow that. I do have a CD ROM drive, I wonder if I can tap into that somehow and swap it with a hard drive...

Reply 4 of 4, by dylanrush

Posted on 2025-06-26, 16:32

dylanrush Offline

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Truffon wrote on 2025-06-26, 12:34:
Hi […]
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Hi

You could try Ontrack (different versions available on Phil's Computer Lab website)
I managed to boot my 486 (limited to 2GB hard disks in bios) on a 40GB HDD after setting it up (limited to a 2GB FAT16 partition for MS-DOS 6.22 obviously).

I never tried on a SD card though, but worth trying IMO.
It's easy and quick to set up.

cool I will check this out!

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