2 X 160GB Hard Disk

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I recently bought a full system, AMD XP 3200, 1GB Memory, KT6V Series Motherboard and FX5700 Graphics Card.

I am trying to get the my 2 hard drives to work on the full space. E.g. 160GB each. I have tried to format the the two hard drives in Windows XP, when I was installing it. But the windows XP Software it is only saying 130 GB each.

When I go to BIOS it tells me that each hard drives are 160 GB which is right.

Can anyone tell me how I could change it to say 160 GB in Windows XP.

Thank You
 
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your BIOS is reporting the hdd size as unformatted size, when the drive is formatted the usable size is reduced, this is also due to the fact there is not 1,000,000,000 bytes in a gigabyte.

pretty sure thats right, i'm sure someone will let me know if it isn't! ;)

J
 

muckshifter

I'm not weird, I'm a limited edition.
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Windows XP manufactured prior to August 2002 has a native limitation of 137GB supporting ATA interface disc drives. In this configuration WinXP will not create partitions greater than 137GB until after the Service Pack is installed and registry bit EnableBigLBA is set to 1.

As of January 2003, new copies of Windows XP Full Versions have incorporated 48-bit Addressing for ATA interface disc drives. You can confirm that your copy has this support by inspecting the installation CD artwork. (press the 'Window Key' & 'Pause/Break' keys together) It should say "Windows XP Home (or Professional) Edition Including Service Pack 1."

For instructions on how to get the latest Windows XP service pack, see the Microsoft article Q322389.

See also the Microsoft Knowledgebase article Q303013 that explains how to enable large drive support after the Service Packs are installed.

If your Windows XP CD does not indicate SP1, then your boot drive partition will have a maximum size of 137GB. After the OS and SP1 are installed, any additional gigabytes will show up as unallocated space on the drive and you can easily create a second partition with the Windows disk management tools.

Whose hard drive are you using?

:D
 

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