Windows 2000 Not reading HDDs correctly

[Guest]

I'm running Win 2k Pro, SP4, With all the updates from Microsoft. Currently
I have three hard drives connected. A 74 GB WD Raptor HD, which reads
correctly, and two Hitachi 250 GB HDs that read incorrectly. One of them I
formatted on this computer, it reads as being only 128 GB. The other I had
previously formatted on another computer and put data on it. When I try and
assign a drive letter to the previously formatted HD (which is NTFS) through
disk manager, there is an X through "Disk 2" and it says "Disk unreadable."
My guess is that windows 2000 doesn't like HDs that are bigger than 128 mb?
Which would explain why it would only format the 250 to 128, and why it wont
read the 250 GB HD that has 250 GB formatted. So how do I fix this?

 

[Stephan Laska]

I'm running Win 2k Pro, SP4, With all the updates from Microsoft. Currently
I have three hard drives connected. A 74 GB WD Raptor HD, which reads
correctly, and two Hitachi 250 GB HDs that read incorrectly. One of them I
formatted on this computer, it reads as being only 128 GB. The other I had
previously formatted on another computer and put data on it. When I try and
assign a drive letter to the previously formatted HD (which is NTFS) through
disk manager, there is an X through "Disk 2" and it says "Disk unreadable."
My guess is that windows 2000 doesn't like HDs that are bigger than 128 mb?
Which would explain why it would only format the 250 to 128, and why it wont
read the 250 GB HD that has 250 GB formatted. So how do I fix this?

old motherboard. not enough bit int he IDE address limits hard drive to 128GB

<q>
With LBA, each sector on the drive is numbered starting from 0. The number is a
28-bit binary number internally, which translates to a sector number of from 0
to 268,435,456. Because each sector represents 512 bytes, this results in a
maximum drive capacity of exactly 128G, or 137 billion bytes
</q>
http://cma.zdnet.com/book/upgraderepair/ch15/ch15.htm

 

[Colon Terminus]

If your BIOS supports 48 bit LBA then the attached .reg file will solve your
problem.

 

[Guest]

Actually the motherboard is brand new. Gigabyte GA-8I915G Pro, that
*SHOULDN'T* be the main issue. I formatted one of the 250's on an older
Dell. Besides, I'm not technically using IDE, these are SATA HDDs, I dont
know if that matters any. It may possibly be a setting in the BIOS I have
incorrectly enabled/disabled. Would using a SATA PCI card help this any? I
have a SATA PCI card lying around somewhere I could slide in.

 

[Colon Terminus]

Copy the following lines into a notepad document.
Save the document as biglba.reg (make sure it isn't saved as biglba.reg.txt,
if so remove the .txt from it.)
Double-click on biglba.reg and respond "Yes" at the prompt.

There 'ya go! Problem solved.

------Copy the lines below, between this line and the next line of
dashes-----
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\atapi\Parameters]
"EnableBigLba"=dword:00000001
------Do not copy this line---------