HELP: Can Asus P2-99 handle 160GB hard drive?

[cenozoite]

I have the absolute latest BIOS for my P2-99 board, and have been
running a Maxtor 80GB drive prfectly problem free for the last few
years.

However, I recently bought an additional 160GB maxtor drive, and cannot
get it recognized by windows at all. At POST the motherboard detects it
as only an 8GB drive. I presumed that since the P2-99 could handle the
80 gig just fine, it would do the same with the 160GB.

Does anyone know whether there is a maximum drive capacity that the
P2-99 can handle, even with the newest BIOS update (version 13), and if
so what is it?

Or if it should be able to handle it, what I am doing wrong? As I said,
BIOS reports it as an 8 gig drive, while Windows XP SP2 simply doesn't
show it as existing at all.

Please, any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

 

[Jody]

I have the absolute latest BIOS for my P2-99 board, and have been
running a Maxtor 80GB drive prfectly problem free for the last few
years.

However, I recently bought an additional 160GB maxtor drive, and cannot
get it recognized by windows at all. At POST the motherboard detects it

From here:
http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1044870&page=5

it looks like it may just barely detect 120gb drives.
I missed if you said you tried this, but i'd put the drive in another system
just to make sure it's not faulty.

From my experience, the hard drive should detect as the motherboard's cap.
But this motherboard IS old

jody

 

[Joe Schmuckatelli]

it looks like it may just barely detect 120gb drives.
I missed if you said you tried this, but i'd put the drive in another system
just to make sure it's not faulty.

I imagine another option would be to use a third-party controller, a
la Promise or something similar.


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[Paul]

I have the absolute latest BIOS for my P2-99 board, and have been
running a Maxtor 80GB drive prfectly problem free for the last few
years.

However, I recently bought an additional 160GB maxtor drive, and cannot
get it recognized by windows at all. At POST the motherboard detects it
as only an 8GB drive. I presumed that since the P2-99 could handle the
80 gig just fine, it would do the same with the 160GB.

Does anyone know whether there is a maximum drive capacity that the
P2-99 can handle, even with the newest BIOS update (version 13), and if
so what is it?

Or if it should be able to handle it, what I am doing wrong? As I said,
BIOS reports it as an 8 gig drive, while Windows XP SP2 simply doesn't
show it as existing at all.

Please, any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

The P2-99 uses the same Southbridge as other members of the
P2B family - PIIX4E. The limit is 147GB, so a 120GB disk will
work. I don't know what will happen when a disk larger than
137GB is used - if the OS never uses the region above 137GB,
you would think it would still work.

http://www.asuscom.de/support/FAQ/faq076_32gb_ide_hdd.htm

If the drive has a "clip jumper", you could use that, but
in general, clipping trims the drive to 32GB, which is
not very useful. If the drive has a "feature tool", see if
the drive can be programmed to declare a smaller operating
size. Since I don't see a "feature tool" on the Maxtor
site, try downloading the Hitachi one, as some people report
it can adjust other manufacturer's drive characteristics.

Feature Tool (v1.97)
http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#FeatureTool

Feature Tool manual - page 16 shows how to change capacity in MSDOS.
http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/ftool_user_guide_197.pdf

Note: To use this tool, I would try to get a more modern
motherboard, connect the drive to a Southbridge interface,
disconnect all other drive devices (so no accidents). The
motherboard you use, should support >137GB disks. The reason
I suggest that, is I don't know if the tool would work or not,
if there are addressing type issues. Using the "128GB" option
is the one you want. (128*1024*1024*1024 bytes = 137,438,953,472)
Once the drive has been set to 128GB, plug it back into the
P2-99 and test it.

Most disk manufacturer tools won't work with another
manufacturer's disks, but there are reports that the
Hitachi feature tool will work. You'll just have to try it
and see.

HTH,
Paul

 

[Stephan Grossklass]

I have the absolute latest BIOS for my P2-99 board, and have been
running a Maxtor 80GB drive prfectly problem free for the last few
years.

However, I recently bought an additional 160GB maxtor drive, and cannot
get it recognized by windows at all. At POST the motherboard detects it
as only an 8GB drive. I presumed that since the P2-99 could handle the
80 gig just fine, it would do the same with the 160GB.

The P2-99 is too old for any kind of 48 bit LBA support, thus it'll
handle 128 GiB or 137 GB max on its built-in controller. Cheap and easy
solution: Drop in a Promise Ultra100 TX2. (Be sure to get the last BIOS
and driver versions, actually the driver should be the last one for the
Ultra*133* TX2 which fixes a problem with WinXP installation. If the
BIOS is older than 2.20.0.14, flash it to the latest one. If it already
has .14, you needn't bother but if you want to flash .15 nonetheless do
it *before* using any drives on the controller or data loss may/will
occur.) I have a brand spanking new 250 gig Hitachi T7K250 (latest
generation, 125 gig platters) on this very controller on my P2B-D and
can't complain about speed or capacity...

Stephan

 

[DaveW]

The drive limit for older boards, even with a BIOS
update, is usually 137 GB.

 

[cenozoite]

Thanks very much to everyone for the replies; at least I know I'm not
just doing something wrong, and that there is in fact a compatibility
issue. The strange thing is that the board isn't detecting the drive at
its apparent 120/137GB maximum, but reporing it as a mere 8GB instead.

Oddly enough, after some tinkering with Windows Xp's drive management
utility, the OS seems to be detecting and handling the commplete 160GB
size just fine, even though BIOS doesn't read it correctly on bootup.
Even odder, I'm using this very drive as my main, primary boot drive a
the moment with no problems whatsoever (so far). It boots, posts it as
8GB, then loads WinXP with full 160GB storage capacity. I'll be
satisfied with that for now, and if I run into any problems down the
line I'll try some of the more creative solutions suggested in this
thread.

Thanks again to everyone for the help, it's greatly appreciated!

 

[Paul]

Thanks very much to everyone for the replies; at least I know I'm not
just doing something wrong, and that there is in fact a compatibility
issue. The strange thing is that the board isn't detecting the drive at
its apparent 120/137GB maximum, but reporing it as a mere 8GB instead.

Oddly enough, after some tinkering with Windows Xp's drive management
utility, the OS seems to be detecting and handling the commplete 160GB
size just fine, even though BIOS doesn't read it correctly on bootup.
Even odder, I'm using this very drive as my main, primary boot drive a
the moment with no problems whatsoever (so far). It boots, posts it as
8GB, then loads WinXP with full 160GB storage capacity. I'll be
satisfied with that for now, and if I run into any problems down the
line I'll try some of the more creative solutions suggested in this
thread.

Thanks again to everyone for the help, it's greatly appreciated!

You aren't finished yet. I'll predict what is going to happen.
You start filling the disk with files. On the write operation
that passes the 137GB mark, sector zero will get overwritten, due
to address rollover. The disk will be corrupted. So, if you have
nothing of value currently on the disk, fill it with 1GB sized
files until you have at least 137 of them on the disk. See if the
system is still bootable.

You could try making a partition that fits below 137GB, and maybe
that would prevent the problem, leaving everything above 137GB
unused. That is a possible workaround. I don't know if Windows
has a reason to ever venture out past the last partition or not.
That could be a dangerous assumption.

At the very least, test your solution, to see that it functions
properly when the disk is full. Don't repeat the mistakes of
people who put 3 months worth of stuff on their disk, only to
have the sector zero corruption cause them to lose everything.

Paul

 

[cenozoite]

Thanks for your suggestion. I certainly wouldn't want to lose months of
files due to sudden corruption, so I tried your method of filling up
the drive to see what happened.

Interestingly enough, the drive is now completely full to capacity and
still booted up just fine as before. Apparently, the 160GB size is
fully writeable and manageable as long as it's Windows doing the
managing and not something more primative like BIOS or DOS.

As long as I never have to access this drive with an emergency boot
startup disk, I should theoretically be okay.