i just bought a maxtor ata133 160gb harddrive, and when i try to install it, i am only able to access 137gb of the 160. what do i need to do to access the full 160gb?? on the box, it says "drives larger than 137gb require...XP SP1 or higher, or ATA/133 PCI card. my motherboard ata133 ports and after i install XP, i've upgraded with SP2, but still i can only access 137gb of the drive. also, i have a dvd-rom connected to slave port of the pri_ata port (with my new HD connected to the master port). would that affect it in anyway?? lastly, i have all my drives jumpers set at CS.

 

Do you have an install CD with at least XP sp1?

If not, you will only be able to format 137GB. The reason is that both windowsxp and pre-ata133 controllers had 37bit addressing, meaning they could access 2^37 bytes, or 137GB. ATA133 controllers have 48bit addressing and xp sp1 has even more.

Now, if you don't have a sp1 install cd, you can make one. What you need to do is "slipstream" (search a tech site) sp1 into the install pack. Basically, this involves making a whole new install CD with xp1 preloaded (you ditch the old one).

You will NOT be able to format a drive with >137 until sp1 is installed. If your only drives is >137, you must reinstall using the NEW sp1 install cd.

 

thanks for the clarification. can you recommend a tech site where i can find this information?? thanks.

 

You might want to upgrade the BIOS on your motherboard as well.

 

I generally get around this by keeping my pc's divided into brains and brawn installs. I will usually run the OS off the smaller drive and archive all non-program data on the large drive.

 

If your drive is already formatted, then you should use Partition Magic to resize the current partition. The error checking within Partition Magic will also tell you if you have a hardware problem, or wrong version of WinXP.

Call me paranoid, but I have used MS Windows for 20 years, and I prefer to use smaller partitions, and at least 2 drives anyway

 

My 120gb hd only shows a capacity of 111GB and Im using windows XP, I just assumed that this was a standard thing Is this a problem that I should fix?

 

No, that 120GB drive is not 120 GIGAbytes, but 120 GIBIbytes.

The hard drive manufacturers define a gigabyte as 1000MB, when in reality it is 2^10 or 1024MB. 120,000,000,000bytes is actually 111.76 GIGAbytes.

Clear?

 

Tom's hardware has it in the "how to" section I believe.

 

Crystal