Pulling Out Hair: P4T-E & 250 Gig Drive

[Bill Anderson]

I've posted on this before, but now I've become desperate. I have a new
Western Digital 250 gigabyte drive that I'm trying to run on a WinXP SP1
system, Asus P4T-E mbo. Is anybody else out there running a large drive
on a P4T-E? So far I've been unsuccessful, so if you can do it, I'd
appreciate hearing how you made it work. When I tried to copy large
amounts of data to the drive this afternoon, I got up to the 137
gigabyte limit, and all files beyond that were reported as "corrupted."

Here's what I've done:

1) The Asus P4T-E motherboard is flashed to version 1005e. According to
documentation, that's supposed to make the mbo support drives larger
than 137 gigabytes -- 48 bit Logical Block Addressing (LBA). And in
fact, the BIOS recognizes the drive size as 250 gigabytes, and indicates
LBA support. Everything *looks* good in the BIOS.

2) I'm running WinXP SP1. I've researched Microsoft Knowledge Base
Article 30313 and upgraded Atapi.sys to the correct version. I've used
X-Setup Pro to insure the registry contains the proper EnableBigLba
value, even though KBA 30313 says that isn't necessary with SP1.
Windows Explorer says the drive's capacity is 250,056,704,000 bytes (232
gigabytes). Yep, WinXP *says* I can access the full capacity of the
drive. I've re-formatted the drive, just to be sure. But when I get to
137 gigabytes, I begin to get error messages.

3) I'm running the latest version of Intel Application Accelerator.

4) Western Digital's Data Lifeguard Tools software will not run properly
on my computer. It always crashes in Windows. And that's too bad,
because this software is *supposed* to provide access the the drive's
full capacity.

5) Western Digital's Lifeguard Diagnostics software reports the capacity
of the physical drive is 137 gigabytes. It also reports the *logical*
size of the drive as 244.20 gigabytes. Now why is that?

I really thought reformatting the drive was going to fix things -- it
took close to 2 hours to reformat the thing. I figured that was about
250 gigabytes. But nope, that didn't do it. I'm still stuck at 137
gigabytes.

Please, somebody, I need help.

 

[Dan]

Two things that might help you. First there are two newer versions of BIOS
for that MB 1006 and 1007. Second you may want to consider partitioning that
HD into two partitions. But it sounds like you are after one big HD anyhow
hope it helps.

 

[John Tindle]

Some Thoughts:

* Could be a problem with the onboard IDE controller (doubt it though)
* What happens if you install a PCI IDE controller card and run it off
that.
* Could be a drive problem. Can you try it in another system?
* Why not partition the drive into 2 x 150GIGs. Or 3 x 80 GIGs..then test it

All I can think of for now.
JT.

 

[Barry Watzman]

Just a comment, ***IF*** you cannot access drives over 137 gigs, then
partitioning the drive into smaller partitions WILL NOT HELP. The 137
gig limit is per physical hard drive, not per partition.

I had a P4T-E motherboard about 2 motherboards back and my recollection
is that I successfully used a 160 gig drive with it (I went to 120 gigs
with several FAT32 partitions in a dual boot configuration, then filled
from 120 to 160 with a single NTFS partition, so that Win98, which can't
go beyond 137 gigs, wouldn't try to). I now have a P4T533 with a 200
gig drive, and no problems (the configuration is similar to what I
described above, still dual boot, to 120 gigs with FAT32 then an 80 gig
NTFS partition for DVD authoring and video editing).

I beleive that the comment earlier was right that you don't have
anything even close to the latest bios, and that is probably the issue.

I have 1009e_beta1; also 1008e_beta3 (and also the older beta2). There
were several each 1006's and 1007's. Your 1005 is ancient and this is
most likely the source of your problem. The latest bios' are not even
availalbe on the US web site, you have to go the Asus Germany web site.

Barry Watzman
(e-mail address removed)

 

[John Tindle]

I'm wondering if Bill's still pulling his hair out...?
I assumed he did have the latest BIOS...
XP SP1 has LBA-48 enabled by default so the OS should see the entire drive.
I understood Explorer indicated a 232 GIG formatted drive, but when
exceeding the drive capacity to >137GIG, everything gets corrupted form then
on, If the BIOS sees it as a 250, partitioning it and testing it is a
logical step..
But you're correct. The latest BIOS is a must have..

JT..

 

[Bill Anderson]

I'm wondering if Bill's still pulling his hair out...?
I assumed he did have the latest BIOS...
XP SP1 has LBA-48 enabled by default so the OS should see the entire drive.
I understood Explorer indicated a 232 GIG formatted drive, but when
exceeding the drive capacity to >137GIG, everything gets corrupted form then
on, If the BIOS sees it as a 250, partitioning it and testing it is a
logical step..
But you're correct. The latest BIOS is a must have..

JT..

Yup, still pulling hair out, and there's not much left.

Here's a note I sent to Western Digital tech support three days ago. I
identified the drive by model and serial number in the request for help
form on the WD tech support website. "Data Lifeguard Tools" is the
software that came with the drive -- software that's supposed to make
the drive run on my computer. "Lifeguard Diagnostics" is different WD
software, downloaded from the WD site.

Description of Problem:
As I begin to load disk near 137 gigabytes, files become corrupted.
Data Lifeguard Tools will not run on my computer in Windows. It
installs, but will only give me an opportunity to report to Microsoft
that the program crashed. Data Lifeguard Tools will not run in DOS when
booting from the Western Digital CD -- I get another crash. Data
Lifeguard Tools WILL run when I use your software to create a bootable
floppy, but when I partitioned the disk with this software, it told me I
really needed to use the Windows version -- and the disk still wouldn't
hold more than 137 gigabytes without corrupting files. I'm running WinXP
SP1. I'm running Intel Application Accelerator ver 2.3. I'll attach a
printout of an Intel Application Accelerator report; the drive in
question is the *secondary slave.* I've upgraded my motherboard bios
(Asus P4T-E) to ver 1008, which is supposed to support 48-bit LBA. I've
researched Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 30313 and upgraded Atapi.sys
to the correct version. I've used X-Setup Pro to insure the registry
contains the proper EnableBigLba value, even though KBA 30313 says that
isn't necessary with SP1. Windows Explorer says the drive's capacity is
250,056,704,000 bytes (232 gigabytes). But Lifeguard Diagnostics
software reports the capacity of the physical drive is 137 gigabytes. It
also reports the *logical* size of the drive as 244.20 gigabytes. Any
ideas? HELP!

They say on their website they try to respond to inquiries like this
within one business day, but due to large volume of requests, it could
take 2-3 days. And now it's been three days.

So back to my original question: Has anyone reading this in the Asus
newsgroup been successful getting a 250 gigabyte drive to run on a
P4T-E? Thanks for any help.

Bill Anderson

 

[Bill Anderson]

A response from WD showed up in my inbox today. As I'd feared, it was
not helpful, but I suppose it's all my fault. I tried, I really tried,
to think of all the pertinent info to put in my message to them. But I
left out (at least) one obvious thing. In the note you can see below, I
told them I'd tried without success to use their Data Lifeguard Tools to
partition and format the hard drive. But I didn't mention that I was
trying Data Lifeguard Tools only as a last resort -- that I'd tried to
partition and format with WinXP's Disk Manager over and over and over
again. And over again. Nope I forgot to mention that. So what did WD
tell me to do? Partition and format with WinXP's Disk Manager. Argh.
I'll contact them again. We'll see.

Just FYI, here are the instructions they gave me:

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=78&p_created=1004833709

I think I may try entering cylinders, heads, and sectors manually in
BIOS, as they suggest. That's something I haven't experimented with yet.

Bill Anderson

 

[John Tindle]

Mmmmmmm...
WD will probaly hint there is something with your system that it not quite
right and I have the feeling you will be asking/answering back and forth for
a long time.

If I were in your shoes I would try the drive in a more recent system just
to eliminate your motherboard as the cause. If it still behaves in the same
way - it's the drive.
Have you tried using it without the Intel AA. It is known to disagree with
certain systems.
I'd also try the ATA controller test - but that's only because I happen to
have one laying around.
Keep us posted..

JT

 

[Bill Anderson]

The problem turned out to be that I needed to re-install WinXP SP-1. I
have a triple-boot system, Win98, Win2K, WinXP, and it eventually
occurred to me I could try accessing the drive out of Win2K. Worked
like a charm -- I loaded it up with over 170 gigabytes and had no
problems at all. Then I rebooted into WinXP and it reported the files
on the drive were corrupted. So today I've clean-installed WinXP SP-1,
and it can use the 250 gigabyte drive just fine -- over 170 gigabytes,
anyway. Now what happened to my previous installation of SP-1 that made
it unable to use the big drive? I have no idea.

Bill Anderson

 

[Paul D. Motzenbecker, Jr.]

Bill,
Greetings and hallucinations from just north of Fantasy Land (Washington,
DC)!
This drive was originally formatted with Windoze 98SE? That would be my
guess. That would explain the 137 GB limitation.
Peace,
Paul

 

[John Tindle]

It was an NTFS partition was it not?
Anyway - mystery solved,

JT