Professor Joe said:
It happens that Professor Joe formulated :
Good peoples
will data on drive be losing or we remove data first, to a zero size drive
before doing EnableBigLba? This to be a slave;
will master drive have data losing when doing EnableBigLba?
Zimboeu thanking you
To Whom It May Concern:
There are two basic requirements for Windows XP to recognize the full
capacity of large-capacity hard drives, i.e., drives having a capacity
greater
than 137 GB...
1. Your mainboard's BIOS must support large-capacity disks, and,
2. The XP operating system must contain SP1 and/or SP2 at the time the
large-capacity HDD is installed.
1. Assuming your mainboard's BIOS supports large-capacity disks, i.e., hard
drives greater than 137 GB, the Windows XP operating system that does *not*
include SP1/SP2 at the time the large-capacity HDD is installed will
recognize *only* a maximum capacity of 137 GB (actually 137 billion bytes
which translates into approx. 128 GB). Should the disk have a greater
capacity, the remaining disk space will *not* be recognized by the XP
operating system. If, on the other hand, the XP installation disk contained
SP1 or SP2 at the time of the OS installation, then the full capacity of the
disk would be recognized.
Keep in mind that in any event, your mainboard's BIOS *must* support
large-capacity disks. If it does not, then installing SP1 or SP2 will *not*,
in and of itself, provide this support. Nor will modifying the registry with
that EnableBigLba entry accomplish the task. Virtually all mainboards
manufactured over the past four years or so support large-capacity disks. If
the mainboard is an older one frequently a BIOS upgrade to provide
large-capacity disk capability is available from the mainboard's
manufacturer.
2. So assuming your mainboard supports large-capacity disks...
If you installed an XP OS that did *not* include SP1 and/or SP2 at the time
the 200 GB HDD was installed, the system would recognize only up to 137 GB,
i.e., 128 GB (see above). If & when SP1 and/or SP2 is *subsequently*
installed, the full capacity of that 200 GB disk will be recognized (again
assuming that your BIOS supports large-capacity disks) -- the 137 GB (128
GB) that was partitioned/formatted when XP was originally installed, and the
remaining (roughly) 50 GB which will be shown as "unallocated space" --
disk space that you can subsequently partition/format using XP's Disk
Management utility (Start | right-click My Computer | Manage | Disk
Management). Note that this will be a second partition on the disk. Assuming
you can live with a two-partitions HDD - fine. The only way to create a
single partition of 186 GB (approx) at this point - should that be your
desire - would be through a third-party partition management program such as
Partition Magic. Or you could start over and make a fresh install of the XP
OS (including SP1 and/or SP2).
Anna
