big harddisk

[hans]

I have a 250 Gb IDE HD from WD
My Bios does support large harddisks.
I am using windows XP, but my original CD is one of the first version (no
SP1)
When i want to format the harddisk the setupprogram only recognised a hd of
137 GB.
IS there a patch or something so i can use all 250 GB of the disk.

Greetings Hans

 

[Bob Knowlden]

I haven't faced this problem yet myself, but maybe an install CD that has
SP1 applied would be helpful. If you have a CD burner, and access to the
network SP1 installation package (approx. 130 MB), you can prepare a backup
copy of the XP disk that has SP1 "slipstreamed" onto it:

http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?object=article.cfm&id=160

"Creating a bootable Windows XP SP1 CD (Nero)" The site also has a recipe
using Easy CD Creator.

(Even if it doesn't help the large drive formatting problem, it's convenient
to have an SP1 version on hand. It make repair installations go much more
smoothly.)

Bob Knowlden

Spam dodger may be in use. Replace nkbob with bobkn.

 

[Donald Link]

Two things! First you have to have SP1 installed!!! MUST!!! Second a 137 is
a large hard disk so you must be sure that the BIOS will reconize Hard
drives beyond this.

 

[Marno van der Molen]

Hi,

Seems like your bios supports up to 140 gig ( 137 gig =
140 gig on pc's ). You should flash your bios. Bios
flashes / updates can often be found on the website of
the manufacturer of your mainboard. Windows XP ( even the
first version ) supports like 300 gig at LEAST. I think
it can even handle several TB. But im not sure about that.
So winxp is not the problem. the bios only reports 140
gig, so winxp sees it as 140 gig. As soon as your bios
recognized the drive as a 250 gig drive, you can format
it in windows xp using the full capacity.

Good luck,

-- Marno

 

[Paul]

Marno,
Your facts are a little off. If you search MSKB you will find several
references to IDE drives not having access to >137GB of space. This is because
the original copy of XP (and Win2000 pre- SP2???) used 28 bit LBA to access IDE
drives. This is why you get the 137 GB limitation (2^28 sectors * 512
bytes/sector=137GB). I believe what you may be referring to is the SCSI drive
limitation. I don't recall off the top of my head what the limitation is there,
but the number you quote may be correct.

The original poster indicated that his BIOS supported 48 bit LBA so to answer
his question, here is a link for him to examine:
http://www.windows-help.net/WindowsXP/winxp-sp1-bootcd.html

Paul