Does XP SP2 support large USB 2.0 hard drives

[Phillip Armitage]

I've been testing a combination of external USB 2.0 box and a Western
Digital 250 hard drive for use as a backup device. Initially I was testing
this on a computer configured with Windows 2000 server with SP 4 installed.
Windows would recognize the drive, but far too often when I tried to backup
to the drive it would hang crashing the backup.

I thought that the problem might be with the system so I took one of my
newer P4-2.4G boxes, installed XP Professional then ran Automatic update
until there was nothing left to update. That meant the system installed SP2
as opposed to installing SP1 first, then SP2. I attached the USB device and
found that I couldn't get XP to see more than 137G of the drive.

If I remove the hard drive from the external box and add it directly to one
of the IDE channels as a slave, I can format it up to its full capacity.

This tends to make me believe that there is something wrong with USB support
on this system for large drives. Everything I've read online talks about how
SP1 fixed this problem. I'm just wondering why in SP2 it doesn't work.

Anyone know the current filenames and versions which would allow a Windows
XP system to support an external USB hard drive larger than 137G? And where
I can get said files?

I look forward to your response.

 

[Karoly Vaczko]

Phillip Armitage írta:

I've been testing a combination of external USB 2.0 box and a Western
Digital 250 hard drive for use as a backup device. Initially I was testing
this on a computer configured with Windows 2000 server with SP 4 installed.
Windows would recognize the drive, but far too often when I tried to backup
to the drive it would hang crashing the backup.

I thought that the problem might be with the system so I took one of my
newer P4-2.4G boxes, installed XP Professional then ran Automatic update
until there was nothing left to update. That meant the system installed SP2
as opposed to installing SP1 first, then SP2. I attached the USB device and
found that I couldn't get XP to see more than 137G of the drive.

If I remove the hard drive from the external box and add it directly to one
of the IDE channels as a slave, I can format it up to its full capacity.

This tends to make me believe that there is something wrong with USB support
on this system for large drives. Everything I've read online talks about how
SP1 fixed this problem. I'm just wondering why in SP2 it doesn't work.

Anyone know the current filenames and versions which would allow a Windows
XP system to support an external USB hard drive larger than 137G? And where
I can get said files?

I look forward to your response.

This might be a problem of your USB box. Did you already checked it with
the vendor?

 

[Richard Urban]

Seeing as how you can buy upwards of 200 gig external USB2 drives from
Maxtor, Seagate and Western Digital I tend to doubt that Windows XP can not
handle them. Your drive enclosure is the limiting factor!

--

Regards:

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard

If you knew half as much as you think you know,
You'd realize you didn't know what you thought you knew!

 

[M]

I have a 400Gb Hitachi Deskstar in one of these
http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/ki.asp?sku=301926&cks=SER Windows XP does not
have any problems with it. This enclosure is USB2.0 and Firewire, I have
found Firewire more reliable. My PC is a Pentium 3 and more than four years
old so yours shouldn't have any problems with it.

 

[Bob Harris]

XP with SP-1 or later can handle large disks, BUT not by default. You also
need to manually turn on 48-bit LBA. See link listed next:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;303013

 

[Art]

XP with SP-1 or later can handle large disks, BUT not by default. You
also need to manually turn on 48-bit LBA. See link listed next:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;303013

It is simply NOT true that one must manually edit the registry in order to
enable large-capacity support, i.e., the so-called 48-bit LBA, for hard
drives having a capacity greater than 137 GB where XP includes SP1 and/or
SP2. The Microsoft article 303013 that Bob refers to clearly states "By
default, support is enabled in SP1." (The article is pre-SP2). There are
certain exotic conditions as stated in that article under which a registry
modification is necessary to provide large-capacity disk support, however,
this involves extremely rare situations that few, if any, users might
encounter.
For all practical purposes two conditions must be met for the XP OS to
recognize large-capacity hard disks...
1. The motherboard's BIOS supports large-capacity disks, and,
2. SP1 or SP2 has been installed.

Phillip's situation is quite puzzling. Assuming I correctly understand the
background of his problem, he states that his XP OS, including SP2 only
recognizes 137 GB of his 250 GB hard drive, but when he removes the HD from
its enclosure and connects it to one of his IDE channels the full capacity
of the disk is recognized. The fact that it is recognized obviously
indicates that his motherboard's BIOS supports large-capacity disks. So why
isn't it being recognized while it's contained in a USB external enclosure?
I don't have an answer never having run into a comparable problem. I do
recall on one occasion a USB enclosure I was working with could not
recognize a 300 GB hard drive I had installed, but that situation had
nothing to do with an inability of the enclosure to recognize
large-capacity, i.e., > 137 GB, disks.
Art

 

[Al Dykes]

It is simply NOT true that one must manually edit the registry in order to
enable large-capacity support, i.e., the so-called 48-bit LBA, for hard
drives having a capacity greater than 137 GB where XP includes SP1 and/or
SP2. The Microsoft article 303013 that Bob refers to clearly states "By
default, support is enabled in SP1." (The article is pre-SP2). There are
certain exotic conditions as stated in that article under which a registry
modification is necessary to provide large-capacity disk support, however,
this involves extremely rare situations that few, if any, users might
encounter.
For all practical purposes two conditions must be met for the XP OS to
recognize large-capacity hard disks...
1. The motherboard's BIOS supports large-capacity disks, and,
2. SP1 or SP2 has been installed.

Phillip's situation is quite puzzling. Assuming I correctly understand the
background of his problem, he states that his XP OS, including SP2 only
recognizes 137 GB of his 250 GB hard drive, but when he removes the HD from
its enclosure and connects it to one of his IDE channels the full capacity
of the disk is recognized. The fact that it is recognized obviously
indicates that his motherboard's BIOS supports large-capacity disks. So why
isn't it being recognized while it's contained in a USB external enclosure?
I don't have an answer never having run into a comparable problem. I do
recall on one occasion a USB enclosure I was working with could not
recognize a 300 GB hard drive I had installed, but that situation had
nothing to do with an inability of the enclosure to recognize
large-capacity, i.e., > 137 GB, disks.
Art

FWIW I've added a 160GB and 200GB SATA disks to a w2kSP4 system as
data disks (ie not booting from them) without so much as adding a
driver. I don't have any There are partitioned, and the largset
partition happens to be 135GB.

It's an ASUS mobo with on-baord SATA controllers, so I assume when I
installed software from ASUS's CD, after installion w2k, I got the
SATA drivers.