Upgrading an A22p with a larger hard drive

[APLer]

I have a Thinkpad A22p (2629). it is behaving itself. I would like to upgrade it with a hard drive to something like 120 GB. However, I am told that the BIOS may not allow it. Is this true? If so how can I get an BIOS upgrade if it is needed. Also might there be other problems in doing such an upgrade? I am aware that I need to make a clone of the current disk before I replace the current hard drive. Any comments are appreciated. Thanks
Ray Polivka

[ElbertR]

I have a Thinkpad A22p (2629). it is behaving itself. I would like to upgrade it with a hard drive to something like 120 GB. However, I am told that the BIOS may not allow it. Is this true? If so how can I get an BIOS upgrade if it is needed. Also might there be other problems in doing such an upgrade? I am aware that I need to make a clone of the current disk before I replace the current hard drive. Any comments are appreciated. Thanks
Ray Polivka

Who told you that? Some older desktops have issues with IDE drives over 137GB. Have not heard about A series laptops having the same problem.

It is always a smart thing to upgrade your bios to the latest version. Check out the Levono website for all updates. Any information about limitations on hard drive size should also be noted there.

[imzjustplayin]

Well IIRC the 440BX chipset with out a doubt doesn't support over 137GB HDDs because it's only 28bit LBA opposed to 48bit. Also I've read that the Southbridge (included with the chipset) may not support over 32GB HDDs or 64GB HDDs. That said, I have a Dell Inspiron 3800 with a 440BX chipset, installed a 60GB HDD in it, I don't believe I had to install a DDO (Disk Drive Overlay) in order to use it. However I did read that the Inspiron 3800 didn't support drives over 64GB but I have a feeling it was a bios limitation. A dell XPS R450 I had supported drives up to 32GB drives and I had an 80gb drive running off the motherboard ATA interface but had a DDO on the drive allowing it to work with that board, again I believe that is a bios limitation.

[schen]

You might want to check the HDD sticky in that AlphaKilo470 put in another conference (I think it's in the 770/600). Just off the top of my head, I've had up through an 80Gb HDD in a T22 which is the sister machine to the A22 with the same chipsets.

[Khyron]

If it's any help, I just installed a 60GB drive in an A22p (2629) and it's woking fine, created 2 fat32 partitions, and formatted..