hard drive advice

[Michael70]

I recently purchased a seagate hard drive and installed
it with no problems and before the installation cd
finished, it pointed out that xp would only use 137 gb
instead of the full 160 til xp and sp1 were installed.
My xp cd came with sp1 and I purchased it the same day as
my hard drive and installed it with no problems. After
xp and sp1 were installed, the hard drive is still not
read at full capacity. I asked seagate and they said it
was an xp issue and referred me to the article 303013 on
enabling lba. I read it, followed the instructions, read
article 302347 and installed the patch for the latest
atapi driver 5.1.2600.1135 and it is still not read at
the full capacity. My bios reads the hard drive brand
and shows full capacity of 160. I have read where many
others have had this problem too. What else should I
do? Flash a new bios anyway and see if it works because
a tech told me that the bios may be reading it as 160 but
not using it at 160. Unallocated space shows as 20
something in disk management. Should I run a program to
recover full capacity because I wil not reformat it and
take a chance to see if it helps? Thanks for your help.

 

[DL]

If you formated prior to enabling BigLba it will have formated to 137gb
If BigLba is now enabled and you see, in disk management, unallocated space.
You would be advised to delete the partition and Format anew. - there have
been MVP posts that suggest if you do not do so, after enabling BigLba, and
simply format the unallocated space to a second partition, there ''could''
be data loss/corruption.

 

[S.Heenan]

I recently purchased a seagate hard drive and installed
it with no problems and before the installation cd
finished, it pointed out that xp would only use 137 gb
instead of the full 160 til xp and sp1 were installed.
My xp cd came with sp1 and I purchased it the same day as
my hard drive and installed it with no problems. After
xp and sp1 were installed, the hard drive is still not
read at full capacity. I asked seagate and they said it
was an xp issue and referred me to the article 303013 on
enabling lba. I read it, followed the instructions, read
article 302347 and installed the patch for the latest
atapi driver 5.1.2600.1135 and it is still not read at
the full capacity. My bios reads the hard drive brand
and shows full capacity of 160. I have read where many
others have had this problem too. What else should I
do? Flash a new bios anyway and see if it works because
a tech told me that the bios may be reading it as 160 but
not using it at 160. Unallocated space shows as 20
something in disk management. Should I run a program to
recover full capacity because I wil not reformat it and
take a chance to see if it helps? Thanks for your help.

Download the Reg48bitLBA utility from this page:
http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/faq/137_winxp.html


Adding a Drive to an Existing System
If Windows XP is already up and running then check MyComputer Properties to
determine if your version has SP1. If not, you should install the Service
Pack before working with the new hard drive. If SP1 is installed and the
Disk Administrator tools show 137GB on your new drive, then EnableBigLBA is
not yet on.

Seagate's DiscWizard 2003 disc installation software for Windows is designed
to make adding a new drive to a system as easy as possible. For your
convenience, Seagate's DiscWizard installation software can set the
EnableBigLBA bit in the registry and prepare the drive to full capacity if
service pack support is active in the operating system.

If you use the traditional Microsoft Disk Administrator or Disk Management
tools to prepare your drive or you need to check the status of the
EnableBigLBA registry setting, you can use the Ontrack Reg48bitLBA utility
to set or confirm if the setting is enabled.