andy said:
I bought and installed a Maxtor 160GB ATA hard drive into my computer. I
used
the install disk (Max Blast3, which came along w/ the drive) to install
the
HD. During the installation, a message came out and said that my pc
doesn't
support Hard Drive that's larger than 137GB. I went through the
installation
guide and found out there is two solutions. One is Ultra
ATA/133-compatible
PCI card, the other solution is to install Microsoft SP1. I had it
installed
and how come it's not working? after the installation, the hard drive is
limited to 137MB, even worse, it dropped to 127GB after i formatted it.
It's
a totally 33 GB lost!!! I am sure my pc is capable for 160GB HD, can
anyone
help me?
And then Andy added in a subsequent posting...
can u tell me how to check if i have SP1 installed?
Andy:
1. Assuming your mainboard's BIOS supports large-capacity disks, i.e.,
drives greater than 137 GB, the Windows XP operating system (that does *not*
include SP1/SP2) will recognize a maximum capacity of 137 GB. Should the
disk have a greater capacity, the remaining disk space will NOT be
recognized by the XP operating system. If, on the other hand, the XP
installation disk contained SP1 or SP2 at the time of the OS installation,
then the full capacity of the disk would be recognized. Keep in mind that in
any event, your mainboard's BIOS *must* support large-capacity disks. If it
does not, then installing SP1 or SP2 will *not*, in and of itself, provide
this support .
2. So if you installed the XP OS that did not include SP1/SP2, the system
would recognize only up to 137 GB. When SP1/SP2 is subsequently installed,
the full capacity of that 160 GB disk will be recognized (again assuming
that your BIOS supports large-capacity disks) -- the 137 GB that was
partitioned/formatted when XP was originally installed, and the remaining
(roughly) 21 GB which will be shown as "unallocated space" -- space that you
can subsequently partition/format using XP's Disk Management utility (Start
| right-click My Computer | Manage | Disk Management). Note that this will
be a second partition on the disk. The only way to create a single 160 GB at
this point, should that be your desire, would be through a third-party
program such as Partition Magic.
Incidentally, note that your 160 GB drive will be reported by the OS to have
a total capacity of about 149 GB. The discrepancy is due to the different
sizing methods used by hard drive manufacturers and the system to report
disk capacity.
A final note -- should the motherboard's BIOS not support large-capacity
disks, the most practical way of getting around this barrier is to install a
controller card that supports large-capacity disks, which every controller
card manufactured today does.
Art
