200 GB hard drive and Win2K. Will this work?

[Nate C.]

Hi,

I've stumbled across some info suggesting that Windows won't properly handle
hard drives over a certain size. I'm running Windows 2000 Pro and am
thinking of getting a 200GB hard drive. Should I expect any problems?

Thanks,
Nate

 

[DS]

Hi,

I've stumbled across some info suggesting that Windows won't properly handle
hard drives over a certain size. I'm running Windows 2000 Pro and am
thinking of getting a 200GB hard drive. Should I expect any problems?

Thanks,
Nate

If your motherboards bios will handle the larger drives, windows should have
no trouble.

 

[Tony Roe]

I'd be interested too. I just added a Seagate 160GB SATA drive, but Win 2k saw
only 128GB.

Hi,

I've stumbled across some info suggesting that Windows won't properly handle
hard drives over a certain size. I'm running Windows 2000 Pro and am
thinking of getting a 200GB hard drive. Should I expect any problems?

Thanks,
Nate

Tony (remove the "_" to reply by email)

 

[Conor]

If your motherboards bios will handle the larger drives, windows should have
no trouble.

Drives of this capacity use 48 bit LBA which your OS must support. It's
lke the NT4 days where it wouldn't create a partition larger than 4GB
until SP1 came out.

 

[Ralph Wade Phillips]

Howdy!

Hi,

I've stumbled across some info suggesting that Windows won't properly handle
hard drives over a certain size. I'm running Windows 2000 Pro and am
thinking of getting a 200GB hard drive. Should I expect any problems?

1) You'll need to either use an ATA/100 or ATA/133 host adapter with
LBA/48 support, or update Win2K to SP4.

2) You MAY need to update a registry key to support LBA/48 also,
although I didn't (but I was already on SP4, and also use a Promise
Ultra100/TX2 that came with the WD 200GB drive I'm using)

3) Same thing for XP, save for it's XP SP1 that adds LBA/48 support.

RwP

 

[Timothy Drouillard]

Win2K Does indeed need a very minor change to the registry.

You should be able to go the the web site of the HD's manufacturer (WD,
Maxtor, etc) and look in their supprt section to find the fix. Quite often
they will have a very simple program for you to run that applies the patch
to W2K all by itself so you don't have to manually alter the registry.

I have done this myself not that long ago on a system at work, and it was
very simple.

 

[Nate C.]

Win2K Does indeed need a very minor change to the registry.

You should be able to go the the web site of the HD's manufacturer (WD,
Maxtor, etc) and look in their supprt section to find the fix. Quite often
they will have a very simple program for you to run that applies the patch
to W2K all by itself so you don't have to manually alter the registry.

I have done this myself not that long ago on a system at work, and it was
very simple.

Thanks, that's great info. I'll check manufacturers' websites before I buy
it to make sure that patch is available.

 

[DaveW]

I believe Win 2K is limited to 137GB.

 

[Crooked-Ridez]

I downloaded a program called *big_drive_enabler.exe* from microsoft I think
when I did one on 2K. I have the file if you want it. Actually, I think I
may have got the file from maxtor's website, as the HD is a 250 gig Maxtor.
You can still try it if you want.

 

[Timothy Drouillard]

Here is the link to the Microsoft Knowledge Base Article - 305098 48-bit LBA
Support for ATAPI Disk Drives in Windows 2000

It explains everything.