Abit AB-BF6, Manual

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Introduction of the BIOS 3-11
User’s Manual
solution to this problem: you can, according to your operating system, choose four operating
modes: NORMAL
,
LBA
,
LARGE
,
Auto.
The HDD auto detection option in the sub-menu will automatically detect the parameters of
your hard disk and the mode supported.
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➤ ➤
➤
Auto:
Just let the BIOS detect your HDD access mode and make the decisions.
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➤ ➤
➤
Normal mode:
Standard normal mode supports hard disks of up to 528MB or less. This mode directly
uses positions indicated by Cylinders (CYLS), Heads, and Sectors to access data.
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LBA (Logical Block Addressing) mode:
The earlier LBA mode can support HDD capacities of up to 8.4GB, and this mode uses a
different method to calculate the position of disk data to be accessed. It translates
Cylinders (CYLS), Heads and Sectors into a logical address where data is located. The
Cylinders, Heads, and Sectors displayed in this menu do not reflect the actual structure
of the hard disk, they are just reference values used to calculate actual positions.
Currently, all high capacity hard disks support this mode, that’s why we recommend you
use this mode. Currently, the BIOS can support the INT 13h extension function,
enabling the LBA mode to support hard disk drive capacities exceeding 8.4GB.
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Large Mode:
When the number of cylinders (CYLs) of the hard disk exceeds 1024 and DOS is not
able to support it, or if your operating system does not support LBA mode, you should
select this mode.
+
Capacity:
This item auto displays your HDD size. Note that this size is usually slightly greater than the
size given by a disk checking program of a formatted disk.
Note
All the items below are available when you set the item Primary IDE Master to Manual .
+
Cylinder:
When disks are placed directly above one another along the shaft, the circular vertical
"slice" consisting of all the tracks located in a particular position is called a cylinder. You
can set the number of cylinders for a HDD. The minimum number you can enter is 0, the
maximum number you can enter is 65536.
+
Head:
This is the tiny electromagnetic coil and metal pole used to create and read back the
magnetic patterns on the disk (also called the read/write head). You can configure the