John Parry said:
Thanks Bob,
I am running SP2, with all Auto Updates as of today so Im not sure why it
is
not working as it should.
John:
There are two basic requirements for the XP operating system to recognize
the full capacity of hard disks greater than 137 GB.
1. The motherboard's BIOS must support large-capacity disks, i.e., disks
whose capacity is greater than 137 GB; and,
2. SP1 and/or SP2 has been installed as an upgrade to the XP OS.
So it's conceivable that your motherboard's BIOS does not support
large-capacity drives. Virtually all motherboards that have been
manufactured during the last three years (approx) have this capability based
upon my experience with a fairly large number of them. Many of the older
boards that didn't originally have this capability have BIOS upgrades to
include this capability.
I'm assuming that you installed your 200 GB drive *after* SP1 and/or SP2 was
installed. If you installed that disk at the time your XP OS did
*not* contain SP1 and/or SP2, then the system would recognize *only* 137 GB
(approx.) of that disk (we'll assume in this situation the BIOS recognizes
large-capacity disks). When you subsequently install SP1 and/or SP2, the
full capacity of that disk will be recognized, *but* the remaining capacity
beyond 137 GB (approx) will be "unallocated space" which, of course, you can
partition/format using XP's Disk Management utility.
Understand that If your motherboard's BIOS does not support large-capacity
drives and no BIOS upgrade for your motherboard exists to achieve this
capability, you can gain this capability by purchasing a controller card
such as the Promise Ultra133 TX2 and installing it
in your machine. They're simple to install and they do their job well.
So, to summarize...
First determine if the problem is that your motherboard's BIOS does not
support large-capacity disks. If that's so, consult your motherboard's
manufacturer's website to see if a BIOS upgrade to provide this capability
is available.
One other thing. Make sure you've correctly jumpered your 200 GB HD in that
you haven't inadvertently imposed some disk-capacity-limitation by
incorrectly jumpering the device.
Anna