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Change HDD from 48-bit to 28-bit addressing?

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First post, by retro games 100

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I have two Western Digital Caviar drives. I bought one last year, which is a SE (special edition) model, and one this week. The one bought this week is a "blue" edition. It's much louder than the older SE drive. Also, when I run Seagate SeaTools for DOS, it says that the more modern "blue" Caviar uses 48-bit addressing, while the older SE model uses 28-bit addressing.

I have a problem with the 48-bit HDD, because my ISA EIDE IO controller doesn't like it. It has no problem with the 28-bit HDD. Is it possible to tell the more modern "blue" 48-bit HDD, to use 28-bit addressing? I know I can limit the drive's capacity using Seagate SeaTools for DOS, but my ancient IO controller still doesn't want to cooperate with this drive.

Thanks a lot for any advice.

Edit: This situation is a bit odd, because both drives are merely 80GB. I wonder why the more modern "blue" edition uses 48-bit addressing, when its capacity is less than 137GB?

Reply 1 of 8, by BigBodZod

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Do you only have an IDE I/O board ???

If so then it maybe that you have to see if their is a CLIPPING LIMIT jumper on the HDD.

Some manufacturers would use one or two pairs of jumpers to clip the HDD to a 2GB or 8GB HDD.

This article may help.

No matter where you go, there you are...

Reply 2 of 8, by retro games 100

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Unfortunately, there is no clipping limit on the 48-bit address 80GB drive. Its manufacture date is 2011, so perhaps Western Digital are no longer concerned about compatibility issues with very old BIOSes?

Reply 4 of 8, by retro games 100

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Sure, the new one is the 48-bit address model. I don't recommend it. It's louder than the older and now sadly defunct SE edition.

(new) http://www.ebuyer.com/product/182432 (new "blue" model, 48-bit)

(old) WD800JB WD Caviar SE, model WD800JB-00JJC0 (old "SE" model, 28-bit)

The new HDD was manufactured very recently. The older HDD was manufactured in March 2009.

Edit: I am hoping to test a WD 2.5" IDE 80GB HDD next week. If it's fairly quiet and a 28-bit address model, then that should work OK for my retro requirements.

Reply 5 of 8, by retro games 100

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I've just received the 2.5" WD HDD. It works, in conjunction with my old ISA EIDE IO controller card. I don't know if it's 28-bit or 48-bit HDD, because I'll need to run SeaTools for DOS on a CD-ROM bootable mobo, and I'll do that soon. The drive is very quiet. There is hardly any idle spin sound. The seek sound can definitely be heard. It sounds like a click-click sound, but is not too noisy.

If I FDISK the drive then format it, MS-DOS can only see 2GB. FDISK then sees that the drive is only being used by about 25%. I wonder why? THE EIDE IO controller should be able to cope with an 8GB HDD.

Reply 6 of 8, by h-a-l-9000

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The official maximum partition size of MS-DOS is 2GB. Inofficial 4GB.

1+1=10

Reply 7 of 8, by retro games 100

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h-a-l-9000 wrote:

The official maximum partition size of MS-DOS is 2GB. Inofficial 4GB.

Ah thanks for the info! 😀

Reply 8 of 8, by retro games 100

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I've just checked the 2.5" IDE HDD with SeaTools for DOS, and it uses 48-bit addressing. Luckily, it seems to work with my old EIDE IO ISA controller card, and I've also tested it with the integrated IDE connection on my 486 mobo.

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