SafeBack can certainly handle IDE hard drives larger than 8.4GB. However, some caution is necessary regarding some of large drives such as the 12 GB Quantum Bigfoot TX.
Not all PCs properly support the necessary BIOS extensions that are required to back up or restore large IDE drives in BIOS mode. In particular, BIOS released earlier than about November, 1997 are unlikely to provide the necessary support. The most common manifestation of a failure is that the drive capacity is truncated at 8.4GB, with the remainder of the drive being inaccessible.
However, all is not lost. SafeBack's direct controller access mode can be used successfully for both backup and restore operations on these drives. Please note that you still may not be able to boot a restored drive, nor will you be able access all of the drive contents if the host system BIOS is deficient, as the boot code and initial geometry determination is made by Windows and MS-DOS using your system's BIOS.
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Copyright © 2004 by New Technologies Armor, Inc. January 22, 2004