HDD Capacity limits on 2K Pro/XP-Pro

[Guest]

I have copyies of early versions of both 2K-Pro (service pack 1) and XP-Pro (no service Pack). Now I am aware that XP can use some very sizeable drives without partitioning them into smaller drives, but is there a limit to how big of an IDE/SATA HDD you can have that the installer will detect properly without service packs. My exacty issue is I have a 160gb HDD, and XP Pro (no service pack) detected it as 131gb, so did my 2K Pro. Both showed there to be 29gb of unpartitioned space on the same drive. Just for a test I tried my 2K3 server disks and it detected the drive as 152gb, so I partitioned it with 2k3, then exited and installed with XP, (XP saying it detected a 152gb partition on 131gb drive) and had odd problems. Does XP Pro (without SP1) have a capacity limit, and the same question for 2K-Pro (SP1), does it have a capacity limit. Or am I looking at this the wrong way, is this a media problem? The drive went bad and I am replacing it, and I was askign this because if it was just faulty HDD from the beginning and that was the size prolems then I will get another drive, but if there is a limit like 120 or 130 gb for out of the box older versions of 2K/XP OS's then I will replace it with a smaller drive. Can someone point me in the right direction please?
Thanks for the help,
Sincerely
Dave B.

 

[Cari \(MS MVP\)]

Without SP1, XP will not 'see' more than 137gb

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;303013&Product=winxp