Win XP Prof won't recognize 200 GB HD...only 137...help

[JM]

Hi. I recently installed a Western Digital 200 GB
harddrive in my computer. I already had a 40 GB WD
harddrive installed with two partitions: 10 and 30. The
OS is on the 10 and I use the 30 for programs and data,
etc. At first when I installed it, there was no icon for
the 200 GB hd under my computer. I used a boot cd and
formatted the disk. 2 problems: 1) the haddrive could
only be formatted in NTFS...my 40 GB hd is in FAT
32..will it be a problem if I keep the harddrives in
different file systems? I already switched a file from
one system to the other without a problem, but I would
like your opinion.

2) When I could partition the new drive, it only saw 137
GB and not 200 GB. I selected as much of the harddrive
to format as I could being the 137GB. I installed the
windows xp os on the 137 GB partition. I then went into
my regular OS, and I saw an icon under my computer. I
right clicked on it and selected format yet again to
remove the OS from the new partition (I have no OS on it,
but it still asks which XP Prof I want to boot from..how
do you remove it from the registry?). I knew I had to
enable 48-bit logical block addressing as I saw the
Knowledge base article 303013 at
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-
us;303013. I updated the Atapi driver. I have SP 1 for
XP professional, and I have a 200 GB harddrive...all the
prereqs listed in the article. My BIOS sees the
harddrive as a 200 GB harddrive. I have an ASUS A7N8X
deluxe, so it should not be a BIOS issue (I already
called ASUS, and they said it was fine). I even added an
EnableBigLba registry value to see if it works. I have
SP1 so it should not matter. Windows unfortunately, only
recognizes 137 GB after I updated it as the article
instructed. What else can I do? There's nothing else in
the article for me to do...please help.

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, JM.

Was there no documentation in the box with that 200 GB HD? No floppy
diskette or CD-ROM with drivers? Nothing?

You used a "boot CD" to format it? Why? You should have simply installed
the drive - with all the proper jumpers and cables, of course - and then
used Disk Management to partition and format it. The ONLY reason to use a
boot disk and the old MS-DOS/Win9x/ME Format.exe would be to format a
larger-than-32-GB volume as FAT32. And there's no reason to use FAT32 any
more unless you install Win9x/ME on that computer. NTFS is far better for
large drives. It is much more secure, both in the sense of security from
unauthorized users and in the sense of security from hard drive failure.

WinXP mixes FAT32 and NTFS as easily as it reads from FAT12 on a floppy or
UDF or CDFS on a CD-ROM. In other words, mixing the file systems is no
problem at all.

You probably used MS-DOS and FDISK to create the partition(s), too. I'm not
sure that FDISK knows how to handle "big drives", even with a BIOS update.
That's probably why you can't see more than 137 GB of the drive. In other
words, you made sure WinXP could handle big drives, but then you didn't use
WinXP to partition that big drive; you went back to good ol' DOS.

My advice is to throw away that MS-DOS boot disk (or at least hide it so
that you won't be tempted ever to use FDISK or Format.exe again).
Physically install your new HD as your second physical drive. Boot into
WinXP. Find Disk Management; one way is to type at the Run prompt:
diskmgmt.msc. Before you do anything in Disk Management, spend some time
studying the program and its Help file. There is a ton of good information
here about hard drives and file systems. When you are ready, use Disk
Management to delete all existing partitions on that second drive. Then
create one or more new partitions, assign drive letters (so that WinXP won't
be tempted to reassign the letters each time you reboot), and format, using
nothing but NTFS all the way.

After that, just use your big new drive the same way you do your smaller
drive.

That is, do it that way IF you want to continue to boot from your old HD and
use the new one for storage. If you want to install the new drive as your
primary master, then post back and we can guide you in how to do that.
Basically, you would partition and format your new drive, then transfer the
operating system, applications and data to it, but there's more than one way
to do that.

Now, while you still have "more space than you'll ever need" (We thought
that when we got our giant 10 GB HDs, didn't we?), is a good time to think
through the question of just how many volumes you should have, what should
be on each one, and how big each should be. It might be a good idea to
leave a part of the HD unpartitioned for now, available for future use.

RC

 

[JM]

I called Western Digital...they had me run diskmgmt.msc
and I was able to partition the whole 186(binary) GB.
That's fine now...what do you think about leaving the
186GB as NTFS while the other 40 is FAT32 though?

 

[Mark]

First look in administrative tools > computer management

storage. Make sure the extra space isn't just sitting

there unformatted...if you see, then format it so you can
use it.

Second, I had the same problem when I added a second 160G
drive. The full size of the second drive wasn't
recognized until I upgraded the file system to NTFS from
FAT on the smaller original drive (the drive with the
OS). Not sure why, but that's what worked for me.
Unless you need the FAT system for a specific program,
switching isn't a problem (a small amount of disk space
gets reserved and unusable under NTFS). Once you see the
total size recognized, the additional space over and
above the current 137G will need to be formatted in
administrative tools > computer management > storage
after it's recognized.

Very important: If you decide to do this, backup your
critical data to CDs first!!!!

Mark (just another user, NOT an MS employee or newsgroup
moderator)

 

[Cyberbear]

I called Western Digital...they had me run diskmgmt.msc
and I was able to partition the whole 186(binary) GB.
That's fine now...what do you think about leaving the
186GB as NTFS while the other 40 is FAT32 though?

You can leave the other drive FAT32, Windows won't care.

You can always convert the smaller drive to NTFS by using the convert
command.

Open a command prompt window and run the following command:

convert /?

This give you the proper syntax and switches. Usually it will be something
like this:

convert c: /FS:NTFS

to convert your C drive.

 

[Lemon Jelly]

Cyberbear - typed:

You can leave the other drive FAT32, Windows won't care.

You can always convert the smaller drive to NTFS by using the convert
command.

Open a command prompt window and run the following command:

convert /?

This give you the proper syntax and switches. Usually it will be
something like this:

convert c: /FS:NTFS

to convert your C drive.

Before using the convert command on partitions over ~8GB, read this
first:
http://aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.htm
If your OS is already NTFS, I'd convert but they'll happily co-exist.
NTFS is more fault-tolerant & uses large partitions more efficiently
before even considering its other benefits.

 

[George Cruppi]

Just for your information:

XP cannot format a disk drive larger than 32GB using FAT32. It can, however,
mount and use a drive that was formatted FAT32 under W98, or Me, that is
larger than 32GB. By design XP will format drives larger than 32GB in NTFS
only. A FAT32 volume, in theory, can be as large as 8 TB.

This information is from the MS WINDOWS XP PROFESSIONAL RESOURCE KIT SECOND
EDITION.

 

[Kent W. England [MVP]]

I don't think anyone mentioned that XP initial release doesn't support
partitions larger than 137 GB, but SP1 supports 48 bit LBA addressing
for much larger drives.

So, if you have an XP SP1 CD, you can partition or reinstall a 200 GB
disk. You should check your BIOS and see if it supports 48 bit LBA IDE
addressing or if there is an update that does. May not be strictly
necessary for XP.

If you downloaded SP1, you face a conundrum. If you have to reinstall
XP, you'll be stuck, since that CD won't support a 200 GB partition, but
if you update to SP1 you can use third-party tools to expand your
partition to 200 GB. In this case, it's best to use multiple partitions
on your giant disk.