Max Hard Drive Size on an Old Pentium 3?

Hey fellow techies,

I am looking to turn an old PIII computer (with 256MB RAM) into a file server for my network. I want to put a 500GB hard drive (IDE) in the machine, but I'm not sure the system could handle it. I'm going to be running a LAMP configuration on Ubuntu Server. Anyone know if there are any storage limits on this sort of setup (i.e. BIOS limitations), or is that dependent on the filesystem (which I am thinking, since a filesystem like FAT has limitations, whereas NTFS has different limits).

For the record, I am planning on doing something similar to this: http://jonpeck.blogspot.com/2006/11/how-to-configure-80-fileserver-in-45.html

Thanks in advance for any help!
Dan

 

The only thing that would be restricting you is the operating system itself if it supports up to 500GB you should be fine. The CPU wont ditacate the max hard drive size as for the BIOS im nto sure if someone else has some input im sure he would appriciate it.

 

Yes older bios won't recognize large drives, but as far as knowing the limit thats a question for google, with a motherboard model number. Certain operating systems will have a max size limit, like 95 was 2 gig i believe, and not sure on the rest. Would need to know the os you intend to install to give more info.