large disk

[hopharrigan]

I put in a maxtor 250GB drive in a new computer and loaded WinXP Pro. It recognised only 127 GB of the drive. I loaded Service Pack 1 but it still recognises only 127 GB. How do I get it to see the entire drive and do I have to format it again and lose all my data and programs in the process? I checked the registry and the EnableBigLba=DWORD is present, although the DWORD:1 is not shown. Nor could I change the registry in Regedit to this value. I looked at the Maxtor web page and it was no help, beyond telling me I needed SP1.
If I need to format it, can I copy (mirror) the present drive onto an external drive and put it back afterward, to save having to re-load all my programs and data?
Second, I loaded SP2 and it slowed the compuetr down terribly, taking 10 minutes to go thru the startup, and 15 minutes to get to the Device Manager page so I could look at the problem, similar time to get the Restore program to come up so I could go back to the time before installing SP2 and so fixing this, but obviously I would like to have SP2 installed. Does anyone know of a compatibility problem with my system, using an Intel MB with 512 3200 RAM? The board and system run at 800 MHz (or whatever).
Man I hate computers.
Thanx for your help in advance, cause I know someone will give it to me!! Only wish I was smart enough to reciprocate.

[spannersatcx]

What MOB is it, it may need a bios update to enable larger HDD to be recognised? Is it an IDE or SATA drive?

Use the maxtor tools available at their website they are normally pretty good.

Have a look here The operating system only recognizes 128 GB or 137 GB of my large capacity drive. (http://maxtor.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/maxtor.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=960&p_created=1016214655&p_sid=doOC9Ish&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPSZwX3NvcnRfYnk9JnBfZ3JpZHNvcnQ9JnBfcm93X2NudD0 3MTkmcF9wYWdlPTE*&p_li=)

[maxell]

Try right click on my computer then click on manage, then disk management , you should be able to set up the rest of your drive as a partition there

[hopharrigan]

Maxel, took me all of 35 seconds to get access to the rest of the drive (I got a total of 232 Gig from the advertised, and BIOS figure of 251 but that is better than I had). Many thanks for your help.

[maxell]

no problem

max

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

hopharrigan,

Since your comp is an old 800Mhz CPU the problem could be the mobo itself. Some mobos had BIOS Revisions that allowed the Mobo to see Drives greater than 137GB. You could start by looking there.

With the new Hard Drive, it might be worth doing a fresh install of WinXP with SP2 already Slipstreamed.

If your mobo is the problem, I would recommend a PCI IDE Controller Card. (I am guessing since this is an older Mobo, this is an IDE Drive and not an SATA Drive.)

http://images10.newegg.com/productimage/16-115-009-02.JPG

http://images10.newegg.com/productimage/16-115-009-01.JPG

Specifications:

Ports: 2x Ultra DMA/ATA100

OS Support: Windows 98/ME, Windows NT4.0, Win2000, Windows XP, Linux (Turbo, Caldera, RedHat, SuSE)

Features: 32bit/33MHz PCI; HighPoint HPT370 UDMA ATA100 Controller; Bootable disk support; Large LBA support capacity exceeding 137GB

This card only supports hard disk drives, not ATAPI devices (like CD-ROM drives)

Retail Box (see pics for details)


Take Care,

Richard