problem with XP and 200 Gb harddrive

[Andy]

Hi

I recently purchased a copy of Windows XP Home Edition and
a Maxtor 200 GB harddrive. My motherboard(Asus A7v133)
detects it as a 189 Gb harddrive. (I know that it will
not say a full 200.) But Windows XP says it is 127 GB.
My BIOS are up to date and I downloaded the patch from
Maxtor that made it so XP could detect larger harddrives.
If anyone knows a solution to this dilemma, any help would
be appreciated. A fix without having to format would be
preferable. Well, thanks in advance!

Andy

 

[Guest]

You should have used the Maxtor utilities to partition / format / make ready
the drive.

If you didn't go back to the start, do not collect $200.

Try again.

Maxtor have everything you need to make it work properly.

 

[=?iso-8859-1?B?uyBtcnRlZSCr?=]

You HAVE to format the drive or it will be unusable.

Why is it a dilema?

I have a 200 GB Maxtor, XP reports 189.91 GB, the drive is split into 4 parts, 30, 30, 20 and 109.9 GB.

--
Just my 2¢ worth,
Jeff
________in response to________
| Hi
|
| I recently purchased a copy of Windows XP Home Edition and
| a Maxtor 200 GB harddrive. My motherboard(Asus A7v133)
| detects it as a 189 Gb harddrive. (I know that it will
| not say a full 200.) But Windows XP says it is 127 GB.
| My BIOS are up to date and I downloaded the patch from
| Maxtor that made it so XP could detect larger harddrives.
| If anyone knows a solution to this dilemma, any help would
| be appreciated. A fix without having to format would be
| preferable. Well, thanks in advance!
|
| Andy

 

[JBM]

Hi

I recently purchased a copy of Windows XP Home Edition and
a Maxtor 200 GB harddrive. My motherboard(Asus A7v133)
detects it as a 189 Gb harddrive. (I know that it will
not say a full 200.) But Windows XP says it is 127 GB.
My BIOS are up to date and I downloaded the patch from
Maxtor that made it so XP could detect larger harddrives.
If anyone knows a solution to this dilemma, any help would
be appreciated. A fix without having to format would be
preferable. Well, thanks in advance!

Andy

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

Do you have SP1 installed? I'm assuming not since XP doesn't see
the entire drive. When you applied the patch from Maxtor did it
give any errors or did it say it worked? Once you get XP to see the
rest of the drive you can create another drive in the new partition.
If you want to use the entire drive under one drive letter without
formatting you'll have to use something like partition magic.
I would also think about slip streaming and creating a new XP
home install disk that contains SP1 then in the future if you format
and reinstall XP you will be able to use the drive under a single
letter if desired.

Jim M

 

[Nathan McNulty]

Also, Windows XP Service Pack 2 will be released very soon and you will
want to make sure to install that. It will include all updates included
with Service Pack 1. That will hopefully be out within a week or so.

 

[DL]

If you formatted prior to installing lge disk patch you will either have to
partition/format remaining spare space or created a slipstreamed install of
xp and use that to do a clean install

 

[Art]

Hi

I recently purchased a copy of Windows XP Home Edition and
a Maxtor 200 GB harddrive. My motherboard(Asus A7v133)
detects it as a 189 Gb harddrive. (I know that it will
not say a full 200.) But Windows XP says it is 127 GB.
My BIOS are up to date and I downloaded the patch from
Maxtor that made it so XP could detect larger harddrives.
If anyone knows a solution to this dilemma, any help would
be appreciated. A fix without having to format would be
preferable. Well, thanks in advance!

Andy

Andy:
I assume that you did not install SP1 when you originally installed Windows
XP. The actual capacity of your 200 GB hard drive is about 186 GB (in binary
terms). The 189 GB your BIOS is reporting is close enough. I note you state
Windows XP reports the capacity of your HD as 127 GB. I'm not sure if that's
a typo since the OS should be reporting 137 GB, assuming you installed XP
without SP1.

Assuming, as you state, that the mainboard's BIOS supports large-capacity
drives, i.e., drives greater than 137 GB, the Windows XP OS (not including
SP1) will recognize a maximum capacity of 137 GB so that the maximum
partition one can create will be that size. Should the drive have a greater
capacity, the remaining disk space will not be recognized by the operating
system. If, however, the XP installation disk includes SP1, then the full
capacity of the disk will be recognized.



Again, assuming the mainboard's BIOS supports large-capacity drives, when
SP1 is subsequently installed, the full capacity of that drive greater than
137 GB will be recognized -- the 137 GB that was partitioned/formatted when
XP (less SP1) was installed; the remaining GB will be shown as "unallocated
space" -- space that you can subsequently partition/format using XP's Disk
Management utility. But note that it will be a second partition on the disk.
The only way to create a single 200 GB (actually, about 186 GB) partition on
that disk in this situation would be through Partition Magic or similar
program.



You do not need, nor, in my opinion, should you use the Maxtor Big Drive
Enabler software patch under the conditions that I've indicated above, i.e.,
your BIOS supports large-capacity disks and your XP OS includes SP1. These
so-called "overlay" programs seem to cause more user grief than they should
over the long-term. They seem certain to rise up and "bite" you at some
future date when, should the need arise, you have to repartition/reformat
your drive.



Art

 

[Andy]

Hi

I'm not sure if Service Pack 1 is on the original XP
install disc that I have. It said it is the 2002
version. But the first thing I did when I booted up was
install all critical windows updates. So Service Pack 1
was/is installed now. And if I have to completely format
the drive in order for it to work, then oh well. I'll do
it. But I had an idea last night which I think will work.
My idea was to use Maxblast 3 to do a drive-to-drive copy
to my 40 GB HD. Which semi-worked. Pretty much all the
files copied over, except a few that were not required to
boot XP, but when I went to boot up thats when I ran into
problems, which I was half expecting. Let me explain.
See the reason I bought XP and a 200 GB was because about
a month ago my windows 98(on a 80 GB harddrive) got
registry errors and needed a format and clean install to
fix. So I installed windows 98 on my 40 GB harddrive in
the meantime until I could buy XP and a larger harddrive.
That worked for about two weeks until oneday it just
stopped booting up. It would either hang with a black
screen when loading up windows or it would say "Safe to
shutdown your computer" and then power down. I hope you
can follow that. So anyways, I formatted the 40 GB a few
times and Win98 and WinXP will not boot up, but I can copy
files to and from it. So it doesn't make sense to me.
Oh and the 127 GB is not a typo. Maxtor's site talks
about it either being 137 or 128, so I figure close enough.
Also, I'm not quite sure what a slipstream install is. If
someone could explain or point me to somewhere that
explains, please do. Well that is all I can think of to
say right now. Thanks for the suggestions and any help
towards fixing my 40 GB hd would be appreciated. I'm
hoping that is just some setting I messed up. Just a lot
of bad luck in the past few weeks!

Andy

-----Original Message-----



Andy:
I assume that you did not install SP1 when you originally installed Windows
XP. The actual capacity of your 200 GB hard drive is about 186 GB (in binary
terms). The 189 GB your BIOS is reporting is close enough. I note you state
Windows XP reports the capacity of your HD as 127 GB. I'm not sure if that's
a typo since the OS should be reporting 137 GB, assuming you installed XP
without SP1.

Assuming, as you state, that the mainboard's BIOS supports large-capacity
drives, i.e., drives greater than 137 GB, the Windows XP OS (not including
SP1) will recognize a maximum capacity of 137 GB so that the maximum
partition one can create will be that size. Should the drive have a greater
capacity, the remaining disk space will not be recognized by the operating
system. If, however, the XP installation disk includes SP1, then the full
capacity of the disk will be recognized.



Again, assuming the mainboard's BIOS supports large- capacity drives, when
SP1 is subsequently installed, the full capacity of that drive greater than
137 GB will be recognized -- the 137 GB that was partitioned/formatted when
XP (less SP1) was installed; the remaining GB will be shown as "unallocated
space" -- space that you can subsequently

partition/format using XP's Disk

 

[JBM]

Here's a link that explains slipstreaming.
http://www.windows-help.net/WindowsXP/winxp-sp1-bootcd.html
it should work with SP2 when its available.
To check if SP1 is installed right click My Computer and click
properties, click the general tab.
You have to install SP1 to get support for large hard drives.
Just installing updates of windows updates won't fix that problem.
I'm not clear if your able to boot into XP or not? If your not
Boot into the recovery console by booting with the XP cd and
pressing R when it says press R to repair using recovery console.
enter the number of the installation you want to repair, probably 1
you'll be asked to enter the administration password. This is the pass
word you created when you installed windows. I use pro, but I think
for home you can just press enter. After you get into the recovery
console type
"chkdsk /P driveletter:" without the quotes. it will check and repair
your drive. I would run it on every drive.
Type help to see a list of the commands available.
You can also type "command /?" for help on a command.

Or have you tried doing a repair install?
Boot from the XP CD the first screen you see that has a line
that says press R to repair using repair console DON'T PRESS R
press enter to continue with setup. Setup will search for
windows installations and will offer to repair ones it finds.

 

[DL]

Slipstream - creates an install disk, that includes latest SP
google will give many hits
http://www.thetechguide.com/articles/slipstream.html an example refering to
Win2K
NB if yr installation disk is pre SP1, then you cannot use it to utilise the
full size of yr hd in a single partition.
You could, with a clean install create a 15gb partition for the o/s, then
update it and partition format the remaing free space as required.

 

[Nathan McNulty]

Also, if you want a simple program that will do this all for you, you
can go here:
http://www.msfn.org/articles.php?action=show&showarticle=49

 

[Trent©]

Also, Windows XP Service Pack 2 will be released very soon and you will
want to make sure to install that.

Yer kidding...right? lol


Have a nice week...

Trent

What do you call a smart blonde?
A golden retriever.

 

[Nathan McNulty]

No, I'm not kidding. Service Pack 2 WILL be released within a week or
so. Windows Update and Automatic Updates should be fairly small
downloads around 100 MB and the network install should be 266 MB.

Official Announcement:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2004/aug04/08-06WinXPSP2LaunchPR.asp

 

[Trent©]

No, I'm not kidding. Service Pack 2 WILL be released within a week or
so. Windows Update and Automatic Updates should be fairly small
downloads around 100 MB and the network install should be 266 MB.

Official Announcement:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2004/aug04/08-06WinXPSP2LaunchPR.asp

Sorry.

I meant kidding about INSTALLING the service pack!

Bad advice...IMHO...unless extreme backup measures are taken.


Have a nice week...

Trent

What do you call a smart blonde?
A golden retriever.

 

[Nathan McNulty]

Service Pack 2 has been extensively tested and is safe to install. The
reason I mentioned it to the OP was because he does not have 48bit LBA
enabled in Windows (or his BIOS is not enabled or does not support it).
If it is just WIndows, then I suggest updating to SP1a which includes
this, but why not install SP2 which contains everything SP1a does and
everything after it including a whole host of new features.