Hard Drive Larger than 137 GB

[Tom Darlington]

I just bought a Maxtor 160 GB hard drive.
The PC's BIOS shows it as 136/137 GB.
I used Ghost to copy the contents of my old 80 GB HD to the new one
and kept the partition under 137 GB to be safe.
Ghost and Partition Magic show the full size of the HD (~156 GB).
According to the Maxtor FAQ, all I need is XP with SP1 and the
registry update (which I have).
Will I be able to access the upper 20 GB safely thru Windows if my
BIOS does not recognize the full HD size? There is not a newer BIOS
available.
I am trying to determine if I need to by an add in interface board or
not.
Thanks in advance.

 

[Yves Leclerc]

What does your motherbaord manufacturer state as the max size for a hard
drive, for your motherboard?

If the BIOS does not show the complete sixe, then I would suspect that you
would need the extra add-in card.

Y.

 

[Nick Burns]

Need a bios upgrade that supports the larger hard drives.

 

[Perdita X. Dream]

I just bought a Maxtor 160 GB hard drive.
The PC's BIOS shows it as 136/137 GB.
I used Ghost to copy the contents of my old 80 GB HD to the new one
and kept the partition under 137 GB to be safe.
Ghost and Partition Magic show the full size of the HD (~156 GB).
According to the Maxtor FAQ, all I need is XP with SP1 and the
registry update (which I have).
Will I be able to access the upper 20 GB safely thru Windows if my
BIOS does not recognize the full HD size? There is not a newer BIOS
available.
I am trying to determine if I need to by an add in interface board or
not.
Thanks in advance.

Around 156?! Err, no it's about 149GB.

 

[Thomas Darlington]

Around 156?! Err, no it's about 149GB.

Partition Magic shows it as EXACTLY 156327 MB.
It is called a 160 GB drive, but I think is actuall around 164.

Tom D.

 

[Andy]

I just bought a Maxtor 160 GB hard drive.
The PC's BIOS shows it as 136/137 GB.
I used Ghost to copy the contents of my old 80 GB HD to the new one
and kept the partition under 137 GB to be safe.
Ghost and Partition Magic show the full size of the HD (~156 GB).
According to the Maxtor FAQ, all I need is XP with SP1 and the
registry update (which I have).
Will I be able to access the upper 20 GB safely thru Windows if my
BIOS does not recognize the full HD size? There is not a newer BIOS
available.

The BIOS is irrelevant. Run Disk Management (right click My Computer >
Manage > Disk Management). It should show that the upper 20GB is
unallocated. Create a partition with it and format.

 

[Nick Burns]

The BIOS is relevant if he don't want a partition.

 

[Thomas Darlington]

Andy,

The Microsoft Knowledge Base Article - 303013 you reference in another
posting specifically states:

You must meet the following requirements to use 48-bit LBA ATAPI support:
a.. You must have a 48-bit LBA compatible BIOS.
b.. You must have a hard disk that has a capacity that is greater than 137
GB.
c.. You must have Windows XP SP1 installed.

I presume my BIOS does not support 48 bit LBA since the entire drive size
does not show up on boot up.
Therefore according to Microsoft this fix will not work, right?

Tom D.

 

[Andy]

First, don't believe everything you read, especially if it doesn't
make logical sense. In this case once the operating system is running,
it does not use the BIOS to access the hard drives.

From experience, I have concluded that the only situation in which you
need a 48-bit LBA compatible BIOS is if you want to install Windows XP
in a partition that a) starts close to and spans the 137GB boundary or
b) starts beyond the 137GB boundary, the reason being that in order to
boot from such a partition, the BIOS must be able to access it. Of
course if you want the Windows XP installation program to see past the
137GB boundary, you need to use a Windows XP CD that has been
slipstreamed with SP1, regardless of the capability of the BIOS.

I am currently running two Maxtor 160GB drives as master and slave off
the primary IDE port of a motherboard that uses the Intel 815EP B-step
chipset, and the BIOS only sees the first 137GB of each drive. The
operating system is Windows 2000 SP3 and has no problem using the
entire capacity of both drives.