Hard Drive installation ?

[Michael]

My previous 60 GB hard drive crashed. I bought a new 160
GB (in decimal) drive. The BIOS will only support up to
137 GB (in binary), and I have the latest BIOS, but when
I begin installing XP SP1 it lets me format the drive at
149 GB (in binary = 160 GB in decimal). Should I let it
format at this higher level. The BIOS does NOT support
48-bit LBA. Looking at the research I've done if I let
the format continue the drive will have data loss. Is
this true since XP SP1 wants to format higher even though
the BIOS says it want support it?

 

[Jerry]

No - XP will be limited to the size f the drive reported by the BIOS -
137Gb.

You can buy a separate PCI controller card that will support the larger
drive.

 

[Nathan McNulty]

Generally speaking, a PCI Controller has been coming with a lot of these
larger drives as well. If you are using a PCI Controller card and
Windows XP allows you to format it to 149 GB, then do it

The BIOS will not get messed up because of settings in Windows XP. If
XP says you can get 149 GB, then you will get 149 GB because XP adds the
48-bit LBA functionality that the BIOS is lacking.

Nathan McNulty

 

[Andy]

My previous 60 GB hard drive crashed. I bought a new 160
GB (in decimal) drive. The BIOS will only support up to
137 GB (in binary), and I have the latest BIOS, but when
I begin installing XP SP1 it lets me format the drive at
149 GB (in binary = 160 GB in decimal). Should I let it
format at this higher level.
Yes

The BIOS does NOT support
48-bit LBA.

This limitation only matters for operations that use the BIOS to
access the hard drive, namely, ntdetect.com and ntldr during the
booting of the installed Windows XP. This would prevent you from
installing Windows XP into a partition that begins close to or past
the 137GB boundary, since the BIOS would be unable to boot from that
partition.

Looking at the research I've done if I let
the format continue the drive will have data loss. Is
this true since XP SP1 wants to format higher even though
the BIOS says it want support it?

No. Once the operating system has booted and is running, it does not
use the BIOS to access the hard drive.