Solutions for surpassing the 528-Mbyte barrier

Medalist 1270 Installation Guide, July 1995	13

Determining if your BIOS accepts more than 528 Mbytes

The following suggestions can help you to determine whether your BIOS limits the drive capacity to 528 Mbytes.

∙If you are using a 286 or 386 computer, the native BIOS does not recognize more than 528 Mbytes.

∙If the copyright date of the BIOS is earlier than 1994, it probably will not recognize more than 528 Mbytes. The BIOS copyright date, manufacturer and version number appear on your screen at the beginning of power-on or reboot.

∙Install the drive using the Standard setup described on page 18. (Transfer the free software stored on the drive to a diskette before you start the installation. See page 11 for transfer instructions.) When the installation is complete, type dir d: for the new drive and check the number of bytes free. The number should be close to the formatted capacity of your drive. If the number is less than 528 Mbytes, you need to consider alter- natives for surpassing the 528-Mbyte barrier. Some alterna- tives are listed below.

Solutions for surpassing the 528-Mbyte barrier

∙Upgrade the BIOS to one that supports more than 528 Mbytes. Such BIOSs incorporate logical block addressing (LBA) and extended cylinder-head-sector (ECHS) addressing.

∙Use a host adapter that supports more than 528 Mbytes.

∙Use the free installation software, EZ-Drive, that is stored on the drive at the factory or an equivalent. (See page 11 for instructions on transferring the software to a diskette. See page 16 for instructions on using EZ-Drive.)

∙Use dual-drive emulation. Dual-drive emulation makes the drive two logical drives for the computer. Each logical drive is assigned a drive type in System Setup and is partitioned and formatted. However, you can only use the translation geome-