hi, i'm looking to buy a second ide hard drive to my current system but i'm unsure if my system will accept it.

My current specs are
amd 1900+
512ddr (pc2100) ram
geforce 5700
pcchips m830lr mobo
60gb ata/100 hd
win xp sp2

I'm looking to buy a ata/133 7200rpm 120gb (maybe a 160gb,200gb) ide hard drive to add to my system but i've read somewhere that the motherboard limit is 130gb. I dont know if this is true so if anyone knows anything about it then please let me know.

I know that my motherboard only supports ata/100 as its maximum setting but i'm looking to upgrade my whole pc in a years time and would like to keep the ata/133 hard drive for this. Is there a problem with backwards compatibility in any current hard drives with these specs?

Also if i am able to run the new hard drive will my PSU be powerful enough. The PSU is 300w and the other pci / ide connections are:-
wireless netgear 3g111 card
creative 5.1 sound card
16x dvd rom drive
16x/10x/40x cd-rw drive
a:\ floppy drive

If there is anything else i need to know then please tell me about it.

Thanks in advance,
Aaron

You should be in good shape, power-wise. I'm running 6 hard drives on an old P100 box with a 250w Power supply, and it keeps on chugging.

But, if your motherboard does not support more than 130GB, that might be an issue. I'd check for a BIOS flash or something, as older boards can usually be updated to support larger drives. Either that, or you can buy an expansion card that will work just fine.

If a BIOS flash doesn't correct the large hard drive recognition issue, then you'll cetrtainly find a utility on the drive manufacturer's website which would allow you to access the full capacity of the drive.

Don't worry about the ATA100/ATA133 issue. In fact I'd suggest you steer clear of ATA133 drives! Only Maxtor make them, and I'd much rather recommend using Samsung, Seagate or Western Digital drives. ATA133 doesn't really give bugger-all performance difference anyway. If you do happen to get one though, it will certainly work on an ATA100 motherboard interface.