137 gig hard drive barrier?

[mdm]

Just put in a 160 gb hard drive and it will only read 130 ish. It is supposed to read the full 160 gb with the latest service pack in xp(with no controller card) but it does not. I'm using it as extra storage for pictures. Any ideas would be helpful. The motherboard is not that old, but I did flash the bios and that did not solve the problem.

[lostdoggy]

It might be the limitation of FAT32!!! Just guessing.

[khiemluu]

Maybe do an fdisk to delete the partition and then create a new fresh one. Then perform a full format, that should make sure you get a fresh drive.

Also, someone correct me if im wrong but it might be something to do with the conversion or interpretation of bytes in a Kbyte.

Definition of 1 KB = 1000 bytes vs 1024 bytes
so you sometimes get:
200 GB drive seen as 186 GB or
160 GB drive seen as 149 GB depending on how 1KB is defined.

Here is a link to Seagates description of the lower drive capacity problem:
http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/tb/capacity_measure.html

Khiem.

[elbirth]

Maybe do an fdisk to delete the partition and then create a new fresh one. Then perform a full format, that should make sure you get a fresh drive.

Also, someone correct me if im wrong but it might be something to do with the conversion or interpretation of bytes in a Kbyte.

Definition of 1 KB = 1000 bytes vs 1024 bytes
so you sometimes get:
200 GB drive seen as 186 GB or
160 GB drive seen as 149 GB depending on how 1KB is defined.

Here is a link to Seagates description of the lower drive capacity problem:
http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/tb/capacity_measure.html

Khiem.

You're absolutely right. You need to reformat the drive in Windows... if you have Parition Magic, an easier way would be to right-click on My Computer, and go to Manage. Then go to Disk Management and find the unallocated harddrive space and initialize it and format it/create a new partition and use Partition Magic to merge it with the other one.

And yes, with the 160gb harddrives, you'll only see about 149gb. I have a few Maxtors that show 149gb and nothing more... that's just due to the conversions that you mentioned. But if it's only in the 130s, then there's still more to be gotten out of it.

[mdm]

I used partitiom magic and everything crashed. I had everything backed up to a external. I flashed the bios to no use. I believe it;s different on a computer bios, if it doesn't work it crashes big time. no luck it still shows same.

[elbirth]

did you go into disk management to see if there was unallocated space?

[mdm]

yes, and after i used patition magic to use it i rebooted to a hang up. must be bios problems.

[etaf]

you need to check your BIOS versions anything from late 2002 is needed to see LBA48 addressing to allow access to larger drives.
also winXP SP1 is required to recognize drives larger than 128gig.

Does the BIOS recognize the entire drive size of 160 (or thereabouts)?
Also, make sure that 48-bit LBA is turned on in the BIOS if you see such a setting.
is it turned on in XP.

Be very careful here - answer the above questions first
Run Regedit and find:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\atapi\Parameters
Add the EnableBigLba DWORD if it does not already exist and give it a value of 1.

[tim]

Oh no, I had this problem with my old computer, and in the end I gave up and just accepted I lost a little space. I didn't like the computer anyway, so I bought a new one.

The problem in my case was the BIOS - it didn't support hard drives over that 137 gig limit. Or maybe it was 128G, I forget. The other options are the ones that the guys have said above. Try using the seagate disk wizard (I think it's called), and there's another tool too. Try both the DOS and Windows versions. Try partition magic if you can get it to go, perhaps you should try it in DOS as well (you might have to make a boot disk).

Good luck!

[SkipD]

I purchased a couple 160GB Western Digital drives a couple years back that came with special IDE interface cards to plug into the computer's I/O slot and then feed the drive(s). The cards provided the needed BIOS patches to run the large drives to their full capacity, even with Win2K. Don't know whether the cards are available separately or not.

One advantage to the added cards is that I could run up to 8 IDE drives in the computer with it - four from the mother board and the additional four from the added card.

[DavidEB]

mac.

[CyberDyneSystems]

MDM,

It's not the drive or the partition table. It's not Windows, or Intel.
PArtition magic can't fix this,... (maybe the software with the drive can?)


It's the ATA controller on the Mother board.

If it's old enough there is a good chance there is no fix for the built in controller.

In many cases flashing the Mobo bios will fix it,. in many cases it won't.

I have a fleet of Abit KG7 RAID Mobos who's High Point RAID controller can work with drives larger than 130GB... but the onbaord ATA controller will not. Latest BIOS can not fix this.

If your Mobo is like the one I'm typing on ... then your only recourse is a new controller.
You can purchase an internal one that uses a PCI slot and will add copacity for four (or more) internal ATA drives.

Or you can install the drive in an external Firewire or USB 2 case.
Be aware though that there are USB 2 controller with the exact same limitation :(
So make sure that the external case you purchase SPECIFIES drives larger than 130GB

And yes,. if you find a Mac old enough it too will not be able to take full advantage of a modern hard drive.

[skyphix]

Despite the shadey advertising of Hard Drive Manufacturers (they use 1000 bytes to a Gigabyte instead of 1024, as stated previously), which is cross platform, by the way... happens in all operating systems... this could be a multitute of things such as Windows not properly formatting the drive (use the afformentioned Partition Magic or something of the like), or your Bios simply not supporting drives bigger than 137GB... which sounds odd to me, because its such a strange number. 128GB and 132GB were common for a while.

Are you using XP Home or XP Professional? PM Me if you'd like more detailed help with this.

Edit: Aparently CDS and I were typing at the same time. Sorry for the redundancy.

[CyberDyneSystems]

.. I think it's 132GB? I just rounded off to 130GB 'cause I can't recall what the number was... :)

[DavidEB]

any mac running OS X will properly format large hard drives. no grief, no worries. I have a 300gb external HD backup, and I have a standalone tank with a 60GB notebook drive, both work fine. My life has been better since ditching the PC world.

you make your bed, you sleep in it.

[skyphix]

CDS - its been forever since Ive run into that issue, so Ive forgotten the exact number as well :)

As far as the Mac/PC opinions, whatever floats your boat.

I've got two Pc's, two linux boxes, and soon to have a Mac Mini, so I am far from close minded in that manor.

[reddragon]

i use a 250 gig h/d and had the same prob

i used partition magic and joined the 2 parts to create one large disk works well
and had no probs

[robertwgross]

(they use 1000 bytes to a Gigabyte instead of 1024, as stated previously)

Wow! A thousand bytes to a Gigabyte. Something got lost in translation.

---Bob Gross---

[rklepper]

Before you go reformatting the thing go to. Control panel/administrative tools/computer management/disk management and make sure that the windows setting are correct (this assumes XP pro)

Doc

[CyberDyneSystems]

any mac running OS X will properly format large hard drives. no grief, no worries. I have a 300gb external HD backup, and I have a standalone tank with a 60GB notebook drive, both work fine. My life has been better since ditching the PC world.

you make your bed, you sleep in it.

Were talking about a hardware issue here that an OS can't fix...

Try a 300GB drive on a "mac classic" ..

I stand by the statement "if you find a Mac old enough it too will not be able to take full advantage of a modern hard drive"

Upgrading the OS to OS X (if it were possible,. which it's not in the case of many older Macs, anything older than a G3 if recall correctly) could not fix the hardware limitation.

[CyberDyneSystems]

winXP SP1 is required to recognize drives larger than 128gig.

Pretty sure this is not ture.. I've been running 160GB drives on WinXP for years. (prior to Sp1 even existing)

There "may" have been a limit to partition size? That I would belive as my 160's were allways busted up into multiple partitions.

We are discussing two distinct types of backward compatibiltiy issues here.

1. Hardware compatibility.. or the ability or inability to use more than a specific amount of a larger disk.

2. Software (OS) compatibilty,. or the OS's ability to see larger than a specific sized PARTITION.

[elbirth]

Pretty sure this is not ture.. I've been running 160GB drives on WinXP for years. (prior to Sp1 even existing)

There "may" have been a limit to partition size? That I would belive as my 160's were allways busted up into multiple partitions.

We are discussing two distinct types of backward compatibiltiy issues here.

1. Hardware compatibility.. or the ability or inability to use more than a specific amount of a larger disk.

2. Software (OS) compatibilty,. or the OS's ability to see larger than a specific sized PARTITION.

it is, actually, and it requires a combination of your two points to actually see it. You have to have the hardware that can support more than 137gb in a single partition, and you have to have Windows XP without SP1. Then you'll see that it won't recognize it all until you upgrade to SP1 or 2.
Simiarly, even if you have SP1, if the hardware is old enough, it will require an ATA controller card to be able to take advantage of the extra space.

[CyberDyneSystems]

elbirth..

without SP1 XP won't recognize a partition over 137... or a drive?

[elbirth]

elbirth..

without SP1 XP won't recognize a partition over 137... or a drive?

As far as I know, no it won't, even if the hardware supports it. XP has to have SP1 to allow for it.

[CyberDyneSystems]

Well,. I'm not going to futz with changing partition sizes to further the experiment....

But here's the Non SP1 system I'm typing from's first hard drive info;

Notice three partitions of a single 160GB Hard drive as seen in the adminstrative tools "disk management" below the individual partitions. The partitions add up to about 152 GB.. (we lose a fewGB for partition table, FAT etc.)

Clearly this XP system is having no trouble with a drive over 137... and I'm going to guess that this is becuase it is only partitions over 137 that XP could not stomache (prior to SP1 of course)

[elbirth]

yeah, I believe you may be right, it's just partitions that size, not necessarily the drive itself... I was just talking to another computer-savvy friend and he's saying he thinks it's just partitions as well.

Personally, I always keep all of my drives formatted to one big partition rather than splitting them up, so I never encounter one or the other by itself.

[CyberDyneSystems]

:lol:

that makes sense.. I'm just "partition happy" :lol:

I got my first copy of "partition magic" back in the DOS days running on Win3.1 :lol:

[FlyingPete]

Wow! A thousand bytes to a Gigabyte. Something got lost in translation.

---Bob Gross---


New compression technology based on chaos theory ;)

[FlyingPete]

My 10 cents worth (they are getting rid of 5 cent coins here soon)

I have has drives on machine way above their BIOS support limits, the best attampt was a 160GB ATA drive on a PPro200 (maximum official support of around 18GB I think), I formatted the drive first in another machine first, however I had two partions both NTFS, and was using a server OS (W2K). I have done the same dodgy on a laptop, 12GB drive where the max support was 8GB.

In doing this, I have been able to access the entire drive, even defrag them with no issues.

Another work around for the older XP issue would be to use NTFS, it does not have the same limitations as FAT32. I have created partitions close to 1TB in Windows 2000 on NTFS partitions with no issues, however it wasn't ATA disk!

As an end note, the differnce between the manufactures terms of a kilobyte being 1000 bytes instead of the real 1024 is often refered to around here as 'Imperial Bytes' (1024) and 'Metric Bytes (1000)' ;)

[kevin_c]

Had exactly the same problem - except my bios reports 137Mb (Meg not gig!)
However Win Xp pro with SP2 recognised it ok and allows me to use all the space without any restrictions or problems.
Mine is a second drive so I'm not sure how you will get on with it as a boot drive.

[mdm]

Thanks for everyones info. I may just get a controller card and go from there.

[Bamamike]

@mdm
First use the format tools delivered by the manufactorer, they offer also tools for older MBs or BIOS, Partition Magic cannot help if there is a physical limitation. I had several installations of large HDs in old systems without problems just using the manufactorer's tools.

[lostdoggy]

Here is what western digital have to say:

Question
Why is the full capacity of EIDE drives larger than 137GB (128GB binary) not recognized in Windows 2000/XP?

Answer
Problem:
The full capacity of EIDE drives larger than 137GB (128GB binary) is not recognized in Windows 2000/XP.

Cause:
The Windows Operating System, Motherboard BIOS, or PCI IDE controller BIOS does not currently support 48-bit LBA (Logical Block Addressing).

Resolution:
48-bit LBA support is necessary for drives larger than 137GB (128GB binary). The following conditions are necessary for the correct functioning of 48-bit LBA support in Windows 2000/XP:

Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1) or Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 (SP3) must be installed for Windows or a registry key must be manually added to Windows' Registry. For information about Windows XP Service Pack 1, see Microsoft Article 322389 or for Windows 2000 Service Pack 3, see Microsoft Article 320853.


The system must have a 48-bit LBA-compatible Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) installed. This includes EIDE controller card BIOSs. Please determine with the computer, motherboard, or PCI IDE conntroller manufacturer if this hardware supports 48-bit LBA.

Note: The Microsoft Knowledge Base articles listed below provide important information about 48-bit LBA support for drives larger than 137GB in Windows. They also reference making necessary registry changes. It is strongly advised that you contact Microsoft directly for assistance.

48-bit LBA Support for ATAPI Disk Drives in Windows 2000.

How to Enable 48-bit Logical Block Addressing Support for ATAPI Disk Drives in Windows XP.

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=928&p_created=1049320914&p_sid=5Jm_cGIh&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPSZwX3NvcnRfYnk9JnBfZ3JpZHNvcnQ9JnBfc m93X2NudD03OTYmcF9wcm9kcz0mcF9jYXRzPSZwX3B2PSZwX2N 2PSZwX3BhZ2U9MQ**&p_li=&p_topview=1

[mdm]

very good stuff, thanks people.

[mdm]

Hi, I wound up getting a new motherboard and threw everything on it. Reloaded windows picked up service pack 2 and checked bios.I also ran regedit and everything was in order. Still showed 127 gigs. Went to admin tools, the computer management used unallocated space of 21 gigs to create new partition and made logical drive. Now I'm able to use the space later when I need it. Question is? 127+21=148 gigs. Where is the other space on this 160 gig drive? I would like to thank everyones advice on this because I was able to walk through the steps to try and fix this annoyance.

[lostdoggy]

FYI my 160GB HDD shows 152GB so you're not that far off. 4GB should be bearable.

[Nolz]

Hi, I wound up getting a new motherboard and threw everything on it. Reloaded windows picked up service pack 2 and checked bios.I also ran regedit and everything was in order. Still showed 127 gigs. Went to admin tools, the computer management used unallocated space of 21 gigs to create new partition and made logical drive. Now I'm able to use the space later when I need it. Question is? 127+21=148 gigs. Where is the other space on this 160 gig drive? I would like to thank everyones advice on this because I was able to walk through the steps to try and fix this annoyance.
mate you might want to go back and read the 3rd post on this thread by "Kluu"...then i beleive the post immediately underneath it reinforces and explains exactly why this is so.
Looks like you may have got too excited and worked up into a frenzy buying a whole bunch of things you dont need.

[mdm]

Well sometimes I do get worked up like the hard drive. I can fix most things but when I can't solve a problem I'm always looking to get it resolved. I read it and you are right. I should be getting around 148-149 gig. Thanks, I'll try and calm down. At least I'll try and justify the new motherboard by saying I upgraded from a 4x to an 8x agp since My main use of computers are for games.