Jon_Hildrum said:
Does your motherboard support drives above 137G
--
Jon Hildrum
DTS MVP
(e-mail address removed)
www.hildrum.com
McElnosher:
We'll assume, at least for the moment unless you indicate otherwise, that
your motherboard's BIOS supports drives > 137 GB. Jon is referring to the
fact that one of the two basic requirements for the XP OS to recognize the
*full* capacity of drives > 137 GB is that the motherboard's BIOS must
support this capability. Virtually every motherboard manufactured over the
past four years or so supports this capability. And there's frequently a
BIOS upgrade available for an older MB that likewise provides this support.
The second requirement is that SP1 or SP2 must be installed at the time you
installed the HD. And that's probably the problem you've experienced as it
has affected so many others. So if you originally installed your
large-capacity drive on an XP system that did *not* contain SP1 or SP2, only
the first 137 GB (roughly 128 GB binary) would have been recognized by the
system.
Now, when you subsequently install SP1 or SP2, the system *will* recognize
the full capacity of your HD, *but* the remaining disk space is considered
"unallocated space". It's disk space that you can partition/format through
the Disk Management utility in XP. It will mean, however, that you now have
a minimum of two partitions on your HD. I assume you can live with that.
You can access the Disk Management utility through Start > right-click My
Computer > Manage > Computer Management > Disk Management. If you're not
familiar with that utility, refer to XP's Help & Support files.
Anna
