@thtfpcuser 

Please press the blue Accept as Solution button below if this post answers your question.

Drives newer than 2011 and larger than 120 gigs are Advanced format drives.

ADVANCED FORMAT DRIVES

This means you must set F2 BIOS SATA OPERATION to AHCI before windows can SEE the drives.

WD800HLFS 80 Gig Drive

80 GIG SEAGATE DRIVE

@speedstep 

I have to decribe the hardware in detail. Its old HDD is 160GB, and the admin wants to attach 1TB HDD to this old computer. Does this computer support 1TB HDD? What is its maximum supported capacity?

@speedstep 

Thank you for answer, I have to contact the administrator, once he tells me the test result, I will confirm whether your answer is the acceptable solution. 

Re: Does this computer support 1TB HDD? What is its maximum supported capacity?

yes it supports 1TB SATA HDD.  No maximum supported SATA HDD capacity.

Dell Optiplex 330 User's Guide

@speedstep  @redxps630 

thanks for your replies. I have questions: 

For Dell Optiplex 330 DT computer, 

What are the possible reasons that could cause that my HDD drives are not recognized by  BIOS?
Incorrectly BIOS settings is one, are there any other possibilities?

@thtfpcuser 

Please press the blue Accept as Solution button below if this post answers the question.

Advanced Format Drives no longer emulate 512e.

Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Server 2003 R2 do not support 512e or 4Kn media.

You have not said which version of windows we are talking about. Windows 7 requires SP1 to handle 512e drives. XP, Vista, 7, 8 are End of Life End of Support.

Setting SATA Operation to ATA instead of AHCI means the onboard controller will not talk to the drive via the sata port.  It also means windows will not see any drive to format or install on.  F2 BIOS SATA OPERATION must be set to AHCI to SEE drives. The sata port where the drive is located must also be enabled.  If you enable a port and do not have a drive attached to it the bios will post with drive not found error.

Advanced Format (AF) disk sector format (HDDs) exceeds 512, 520, or 528 bytes per sector,
such as the 4096, 4112, 4160, and 4224-byte (4 KB)
sectors of an Advanced Format Drive (AFD).

Older drives use 512E is a 4K sector size.

512N is 512 byte sector size.

 Advanced format drives use 4k logical sectors.

Advanced format disk compatibility 

@speedstep  

The Dell computer works as a server in Local Area Network. It runs Debian 5 Linux i386 released on 2009. The OS has never upgraded since 2009, it is End of Life and Support. 

@thtfpcuser 

There is no Linux support for machines that did not ship with Linux from Dell.

Linux not fully prepared for Advanced Format Drives 2010

DELL linux systems 

There is support for linux from various vendors.

That support is not free.

Bios version may need to be updated to support drives larger than 120 gigs with 48 bit Logical Block Addressing.

For X86 32-bit OS, the system can support up to 232 blocks of capacity which is 2 Terabytes Max.

https://www.suse.com/support/

https://ubuntu.com/pricing

DELL A4812058 VLA RED HAT 3YR ENTERPRISE LINUX SERVER , Per server support $1000

 Ateamsystems linux technical support 

Redhat centos stream Pricing

I removed the old HDD drive, both the power cord and data cord are disconnected. Then I connect a healthy HDD drive (WD5000AAKX), it is recognized by the Dell computer, without any changes to the BIOS settings. Perhaps the old HDD drive has problems which prevent the computer to recognize other HDD drives, or the computer’s AC/DC adapter is aging, cannot provide enough electric power.