Motherboard manufacturer Asus has released a freeware app to enable older PCs to access the full capacity of new 3000GB hard drives.

The problem revolves around technical issues that prevent many current systems from being able to use new 2500 and 3000GB hard drives.

At the moment, new hard drives beyond 2.2TB cannot be accessed without a PC using new BIOS technology. The Asus software, called Disk Unlocker, is said to allow all of its motherboards using a select series of chipset to handle the full capacity of these drives.

Asus motherboards with the following chipsets are said to be supported -

Compatible Motherboard Series
Intel® Chipsets
X58 Series P55 Series H57 Series H55 Series X48 Series
P45 Series P43 Series G45 Series G43 Series G41 Series
X38 Series P35 Series G35 Series G31 Series 946GZ Series
946PL Series 945GC Series 945GZ Series 945P Series 945PL Series
AMD® Chipsets
890FX Series 890GX Series 880G Series 870 Series 790FX Series
790GX Series 790X Series 785G Series 780G Series 770 Series
760G Series 740G Series
NVIDIA® Chipsets
980a SLI Series 750a SLI Series 780a SLI Series

This covers the vast majority of Intel Core 2 and Core i-series on Intel chips as well as almost all AMD Phenom/II and Athlon II-based systems.

Currently, Western Digital is selling 2500GB and 3000GB drives bundled with a PCI-E expansion card to overcome the technical issues (to do with LBA or Logical Block Addressing). It would seem this software means expansion cards are not required.

Given that the support is based on chipset, it’ll be interesting to see if the software will work on other brands of motherboards as well. This is unlikely as Asus’ software will probably be looking for markers that ensure the software only runs on Asus-branded boards with these chipsets.

You can grab the free software here.

Similar Posts:

Share
Clip to Evernote