EPOX EP-GXB-M, Manual

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EP-GXB-M Award BIOS Setup
Page 63
word each time the system is booted. Either password may be entered but only the
SUPERVISOR has the ability to change the majority of CMOS options. USER can
only boot and change the USER password in CMOS.
IDE HDD Auto Detection
The “IDE HDD auto detection” utility is a very useful tool, especially when you do
not know which kind of hard disk type you are using. You can use this utility to
detect the correct disk type installed in the system automatically. You can also set
HARD DISK TYPE to Auto in the STANDARD CMOS SETUP so the BIOS will
automatically detect the drives at boot.
NOTE: The Award BIOS supports 3 HDD modes - NORMAL, LBA & LARGE.
Normal mode: Generic access mode in which neither the BIOS nor the IDE control-
ler will make any transformations during accessing. The maximum number of
cylinders, head & sectors for NORMAL mode are: 1024, 16 & 63
no. Cylinder (1024)
x no. Head ( 16)
x no. Sector ( 63)
x no. per sector ( 512)
528 Megabytes
If user set his HDD to NORMAL mode, the maximum accessible HDD size will be
528 Megabytes even though its physical size may be greater than that!
LBA (Logical Block Addressing) mode: A new HDD accessing method to over-
come 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 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. Cylinder (1024)
x no. Head ( 255)
x no. Sector ( 63)
x bytes per sector ( 512)
8.4 GigaBytes