WinXP Can't See More Than 137 Gigabytes

[Bill Anderson]

I'm running WinXP SP1 and I've installed a 250 gigabyte hard drive to
use for data storage. Trouble is, my system sees only about the first
137 gigabytes of the hard drive. When I try to add more files above
137 gigabytes, everything new gets corrupted.

So I've been working all day on this -- literally -- and while I've
learned a few things, I still can't access more than 137 gigabytes on
that drive.

Here's what I see:

* BIOS: About two years ago I flashed my Asus P4T-E's BIOS to ver.
1005e. According to the documentation, that BIOS update provides
support for 48-bit LBA. In fact, the system BIOS reports that I have
a 250 gigabyte drive installed, and it's set to LBA.

* WinXP SP1: Windows Explorer reports an NTFS formatted drive with 232
gigabytes of free space (250,046,488,576 bytes). Disk Manager reports
the same, and says the drive is healty.

* Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 303013 said my ATAPI driver needed
to be version 5.1.2600.1135. Mine wasn't, so I've run the proper
Hotfix and now I have the right version of Atapi.sys.

* The same Microsoft KBA suggested for the original version of WinXP
setting the registry value EnableBigLba to 1. My registry doesn't
contain such a value, probably because I'm already running SP1? I've
searched the entire registry for EnableBigLba and it's not there. Do
I need to add it, using the long, complicated instructions in
Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 303013? If so, where would I get the
"Sysprep tool?"

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

* I've tried to use Western Digital's Data Lifeguard Tools, but after
installing Data Lifeguard from the installation CD, the program always
crashes, with an offer to send a bug report to Microsoft. A version I
downloaded from Western Digital (same thing, actually), crashes in
exactly the same way. I've tried booting from the CD that came with
my new disk, but I get error messages and then I'm dumped in DOS onto
a virtual Drive X:, where nothing exists. If I try to do a DIR on
Drive X:, I get "ignore/abort/retry." However, I did manage to create
a bootable floppy from the installation CD, and it actually ran. I
used it to partition and format the new drive, even though it warned
me I really should be doing this in Windows. (Can't do it -- the
program won't run in Windows.) Bottom line, I've struck out using
Western Digital's software to access more than 137 gigabytes.

* I've downloaded Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostics. It
shows physical drives in one window, and logical drives in another.
In the physical drive window, my new drive's size is 134.22 gigabytes.
In the logical drive window, my new drive's size is 244.20 gigabytes.

And still, when I write to the disk, everything above 137 gigabytes
gets corrupted. I'm stumped. Anybody have any ideas?

 

[Jerry]

You have to turn on FAT48 (or LBA48) for XP to see the larger drive.

Go to www.xteq.com and get their X-Setup program. It will have a switch for
it.

 

[Bill Anderson]

You have to turn on FAT48 (or LBA48) for XP to see the larger drive.

Go to www.xteq.com and get their X-Setup program. It will have a switch for
it.

Thanks, Jerry. I tried your suggestion, and at first I thought it had
worked. But no, and 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.

Bill Anderson

 

[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