[dratsabs]

Hi,

I'm trying to fit a 160Gb IDE HDD but BIOS sees it as 136Gb and Windows 2000 sees it as 128Gb.

My motherboard is getting on a bit, a VIA chipset with PIII 600MHz CPU.

I have the latest BIOS which is Advance 5-133E V1.2.

I am aware of a 137Gb issue with Windows 2000.

2 things: -

1. Does it matter if BIOS doesn't see it properly. I don't think there's a furhter BIOS update so I just want a Win2K fix.

2. What's the fix for Win2K. I've heard of Application Accelerator which provides 48bit addressing but this is only good for Intel chipset. Is there a VIA chipset equivelant or an alternive remedy?

Many thanks,

[dratsabs]

Thanks for the reply AlecStaar.

Excuse my ignorance but what is iirc?

I think my BIOS is not going to have 48 bit LBA, it's already reported 136Gb and there a no further updates.

Will it matter, can Win2K still work?

I have a copy of SP4, will install that and try it.

Thanks again.

[Tomay]

There is also a technology bios page for QDI mobos. I doubt if it will fix your problem, but if APK's advice doesn't help it's worth a try.

You can download it from here http://www.qdigrp.com/qdisite/eng/support/d_qditechbios.htm

[clutch]

Quote:

Excuse my ignorance but what is iirc?

"If I Recall Correctly"

[PsychoSword]

This is a good topic for me as I have a 60 gig hard drive with W2K and a VIA chipset.

I would assume I would need to buy a separate PCI hard drive controller card in order to get a bios to recognize the full size of say a 250-300gig drive. Anybody see any potential problems with this?

[jmmijo]

@PsychoSword, no problem with adding a secondary PCI controller, like the ones from Promise for instance. They all support 48-bit LBA now. If you did happen to get an older firmware on the card it can easily be flashed to support this new addressing

[duhmez]

Easy peezy that is. you MUST buy an ide contorller card. I reocmmend promise ultra 133 TX2. (the 100 tx 2 also suports 48 bit addressing)

Once on the promise, and service pack 3 or greater is installed, then you can format to whatever size youi wish.

If you want to install fresh and have full size, here is dirty but free soltuion instead of partition magic.

Fdisk the drive and make a partiiton of 200 gig.
Do not format it, just make the partition. Then instalkl windows 2000 into this partiiton and format ntfs. Blammo done.

[Mr.Guvernment]

Some pCI card only see 120g

i have a 200g and a 250WD on a old p4 1.4 - u can do paritions - i had to do that with one of my drive a 15g in an old 133 system.

[dratsabs]

My thanks to everybody that contributed, I have made progress.

I installed service pack 4 and Win2K let me create a full 160Gb partition. However, I could only format this (full size) in NTFS. If I format in FAT32, it counts through to 99% done and then reports Volume too big.

So I made two partitions of 100Gb and 60Gb. I then formatted the 100Gb in FAT32 which was fine but when I tried to format the other 60Gb (also FAT32), I got the volume too big error again!

I'm happy with NTFS so that's fine.

Still curious about FAT32 though! Maybe it's because my BIOS sees it as 136G. Is FAT32 dependant on the BIOS limitations but Win2K takes over for NTFS?

Or is that complete (_o_)

[PsychoSword]

Well it sounds like I don't need a registry hack if I fdisk the new hard drive to the full capacity and then reinstall fresh, which I would of course do anyways with a new drive.

Are there any limitations now with fdisk regarding this?

[duhmez]

fdisk will make your parititon the full size no problem.

Microsoft made disk management unable to format fat32 larger than 32 Gig. This is artificial limit built into windows 2000/XP. No way around it except to use Fdisk.
It's really sleazy the way m$ did it too, it makes you wait until 99% then says" too big"

filthy rotten scum........

I love windows too, but these artificial limitations m$ builds into things piss me off.

[PsychoSword]

Quote:

fdisk will make your parititon the full size no problem.

Microsoft made disk management unable to format fat32 larger than 32 Gig. This is artificial limit built into windows 2000/XP. No way around it except to use Fdisk.
It's really sleazy the way m$ did it too, it makes you wait until 99% then says" too big"

filthy rotten scum........

I love windows too, but these artificial limitations m$ builds into things piss me off.

Yea, I was just wondering about the full size being recognized as a partition with fdisk, I was just wondering if there was any artificial limit built into it, but I assume not. I use NTFS now anyways. Typically I run fdisk, create a full sized partition and then format it with the Windows 2000 disk in NTFS.

[Mr.Guvernment]

with a hard drive that big u are better off wityh NTFS anyways - better reliability then FAT32 anyways - there is really no reason to use FAT32 any more if your using Xp/2k