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P5V580-AT-C M/B Manual Page 27
3.
AWARD BIOS SETUP
The maximum number of cylinders, head & sectors for NORMAL mode are 1024, 16 & 63
no. Cyclinder
(1024)
x no. Head
( 16)
x no. Sector
( 63)
x no. per sector ( 512)
528 Megabytes
If user set their HDD to NORMAL mode, the maximum accessible HDD size will be 528
Megabytes even though its physical size may be greater than that!
LAB (Logical Block Addressing) mode
This is a HDD accessing method to overcome the 528 Megabyte bottleneck. The number
of
cylinders, heads & sectors shown in setup may not be the number physically contained in
the
HDD.
During HDD accessing, the IDE controller will transform the logical address described by
sector, head & cylinder number into its own physical address inside the HDD.
The maximum HDD size supported by LBA mode is 8.4 Gigabytes which is obtained by the
following formula:
no. Cyclinder
( 1024)
x no. Head
( 255)
x no. Sector
( 63)
x bytes per sector ( 512)
8.4 Gigabytes
LARGE mode
Extended HDD access mode supported by Award Software.
Some IDE HDDs contain more than 1024 cylinder without LBA support (in some cases,
user
do not want LBA). The Award BIOS provides another alternative to support these kinds of
HDD!
Example of LARGE mode:
CYLS.
HEADS SECTOR MODE
1120
16
59
NORMAL
560
32
59
LARGE
The BIOS tricks DOS (or any other OS) into thinking that the number of cylinders is less
than
1024 by dividing it by 2. At the same time, the number of heads is multiplied by 2. A
reverse
