harddrive replacement question

[b1tchm4gn3t]

heres the situation, I have a HP Pavilion 533w. Original harddrive is still working great (Western Digital 60 gb 5400 RPM), but a secondary harddrive I installed 2 years ago failed (Maxtor 80 gb 5400 RPM). Question is...my new drive I ordered today (200 gb drive 7200 RPM) is a faster drive and HP says I cannot use it because the motherboard is rated for a slower drive (5400 RPM). Anyone have any ideas on how or if I can still use the new faster drive? I have looked for a BIOS update for the MB but to no avail. I am also wondering about the 'My computer wont display the full capacity of a larger drive' issue. Thank you for any replies!

[thevoelk]

The faster drive will run slower. HP just wants you to buy the drive from them at a nice markup.

[b1tchm4gn3t]

but what about the issue of having the drive show up as less than a 200 gb when looking at the properties of it?

[hudsonf]

If it doesn't work try a IDE controller card.

[glockjs]

but what about the issue of having the drive show up as less than a 200 gb when looking at the properties of it?

what size does it show?

137 is the magical sp update mark. a little less than it shows is the magical exact size number

[b1tchm4gn3t]

I just ordered the new drive today and wont get it untill tomarrow.

[thevoelk]

I'm guessing that since you have a Celeron 2.0 GHz, the BIOS on the board you're using will probably recognize it. There's a BIOS Update from February of 2003, it's probably a good idea to make that you update to this version. There's no mention of enhancements, only fixes.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareDownloadIndex?lc=en&lang=en&cc=us&os=228&pr...tem=pv-15624-1

If your BIOS doesn't recognize the drive, you're best bet is a controller card.

[b1tchm4gn3t]

I have had that BIOS update and flashed it quite awhile ago, Ill install that new drive tomarrow and post what happens and we can go from there. Also while Im here...I am wondering that on that page, it states that it adds support for 'Newer Intel Processors', does this mean I can get a faster chip to help speed things up or is it where I cant even upgrade my chip?

[thevoelk]

You'd probably have to ask HP. Every board is different, but I would guess that it would support almost any Intel that is the same caor and socket type as your current Celeron, except for some of the latest ones.

[b1tchm4gn3t]

well the new 200 GB harddrive installed without incident. Shows up as 186 gig in the properties and seems to be faster than my other drive that died on me, although Im not sure its running at full speed. My guess is that it is running at 7200 rpm and not the 5400. Im now going to see if I cant get some sort of benchmark test to see what I can find out, as I would really like to know what this drive is really doing. I know I ran this through PCPITSTOP after I installed the drive and it did say the uncached speed of this new drive is like 54 mb/second.