HDD size limit

[Guest]

My boot disc is a 200 GB western Digital cavair SE 7200 (C drive) and the
same but 160 GB (F) as a simple file storage system.

My BIOS is somewhat old but still decent (gigabyte 8I-TXE) and supports 48
bit LBA. But when I tried to format "F" it was capped at 70 GB.

This is probably my bios limit kicking in saying 'no more!' but even after
removing c and replacing it with a bootable maxtor 80GB drive no unallocated
space shows up in disk managment. Will I have to reformat to utilize all of
its space?

 

[Bob Willard]

My boot disc is a 200 GB western Digital cavair SE 7200 (C drive) and the
same but 160 GB (F) as a simple file storage system.

My BIOS is somewhat old but still decent (gigabyte 8I-TXE) and supports 48
bit LBA. But when I tried to format "F" it was capped at 70 GB.

This is probably my bios limit kicking in saying 'no more!' but even after
removing c and replacing it with a bootable maxtor 80GB drive no unallocated
space shows up in disk managment. Will I have to reformat to utilize all of
its space?

Doesn't sound like a BIOS problem if your BIOS supports a 200GB HD but
chokes
on a 160GB HD. Try setting the BIOS params for that 2nd HD to Auto, and let
the BIOS discover that HD's params.

 

[Guest]

Ya, I tried, even the Western Digital 'data lifegaurd tools 11' will try to
lay down a DDO over the disc (which was uneeded for the 200GB) with or
without win XP SP2 installed somewhere.

This is a mess, I am opening two restaurants and doing this too and forget
where I am sometimes but I think the HD disc (maxtor) Im using to format the
160 was having issues (rebooting after any hardware change to any disc).

I did a parallel install and will try to format again tommorrow. Less
stressed [and sober-ish, lol]. If I can't format the disc without DDO then
I'll just use it as my external USB backup until I upgrade I guess.

Thanks for your Input BOB, sometime my BIOS likes to revert to old Saves and
has trouble with the 'Auto' setting . It's time to upgrade but I'm stubborn
and like to work around old issues before buying into new problems I guess.