137Gig Limit - possible work-around?

po0k

I'll be building a server shortly and with 160Gig and 120Gig hard drives so similar in price, I'd obviously like to get more space for the money, but the motherboard I'm getting is the MSI K7D Master-L, based on the AMD 760MPX chipset, which only supports up to UDMA100/ATA100, which afaik limits the capacity to 127Gibibytes/137Gigabytes doesn't it?
As I'd be running a bootmanager (Lilo probably) at the very start of the drive (first 10 or so megs), with swap, Linux and WinSer2003 partitions after that, all the bios needs to be able to read would be the MBR and the boot partition surely?
Initial formatting/partitioning could be done with Partition Magic 8 / Linux install CDs surely?

If I'm wrong, and the limit only affects UDMA33/ATA33 drives, but the non-BIOS addressing method still works, then I should be able to add 160Gig drives to my current system (ATA33) anyways
And theoretically could boot from the drive or mount it in windows/linux as a second drive with the full pre-install capacity.

Am I correct in my thinking or talking through my arse?

joePC

The standard on the MB donest limit the size of the Hdd you can have, its the File system you have installed that will limit you.
You may run into problem with the MB reconizing the size of the Hdd but there would be a bios update in such an avent.

Thanks joePC

po0k

The motherboard is about 2 years old, and afaik there are no new BIOS firmwares that support 48-bit addressing.
Surely with ext2/3 or FAT32/NTFS (32-bit address => 2.2TB) you can format large partitions with ease?
The only problem would be booting the thing, which is acomplished with a boot loader by either manually setting the drive config in the BIOS settings, putting it to auto or applying a cylinder-limiting jumper on the drive itself.
As long as the board can boot you should be able to format and address the partitions surely?
I've read in a few places about problems with Intel platforms and larger drives, you need the Application Acceleration/ICH drivers, or XP SP1/2K SP4 to enable 48-bit addressing.

Mutant_Fruit

No no no. Its the OS that limits the maximum amount you can partition (along with the bios).

REcently i got 160gb Western Digital harddrive. I thought it would be nice and simple, just plug and play, but it wasn;t.

I whipped out my old dead drive, slotted in the new drive, and the bios recognised it as 160gb, so i thought i was sorted. But, as soon as i booted into windows, i was confronted with a nasty shoc, i could only format 137gb of the drive.

But a solution was easily at hand. As long as i had installed service pack1 (for windows XP) all i had to do was do a quick registry hack, and it worked perfect.

with Intel platforms and larger drives, you need the Application Acceleration/ICH drivers, or XP SP1/2K SP4 to enable 48-bit addressing.

If you go for the 160gb, there's a program on the western digital site that'll enable "large drive support" in windows XP. I presume if your OS doesn;t natively support large drives data lifeguard will help. Once support is enabled, you can go right ahead and uninstall it.

Also, this problem is on all os's and platforms.

quozl

i stuck a 180gb hd in a pentiurm 2-400 running debian linux. All was well, until I filled past the 137gb mark, when the ****ing thing wrapped around and started overwritting the start of the hard drive. Not funny.

So I bought a 30e ata133 ide controller card, which is always handy to have around anyways, and now the 180gb hd works to it's full capacity, and faster than it did off the atat66 controller on the motherboard.

might be worth the 30e for you as well?

Greg

Tenshot

If the chipset only supports 28-bit addressing, all the OS patches in the world won't help you. These days, it's crazy to buy anything that doesn't support ATA133 out of the box.

If you do find yourself stuck with a large drive and a non-ATA133 controller, about the best you can do is format it to < 137 GB and just write off the rest. (I lost quite a lot of data finding this out the hard way a few months ago). Much easier to just buy an ATA133 PCI controller and use that instead.

po0k

What make/model controller?
I might just look into it

Would need to get a bigger case and or power supply aswell by that stage.
Only have 3 3.5" bays at the moment, all of which are full, and 3 5.25", one of which has a plextor burner and the other has a 120Gig WD special Ed supported by an empty 10-pack of Marlboro Lights and sellotape.
The PSU is only 230W

Civilian_Target

I have a 160gb hard disk attached to an ATA-66 controller in my Gigabyte 7ZX mobo and it works fine. However, you have to get windows to use 48-bit LBA to make it work right under windows. So you'll need Win2k SP3 or Windows XP for a start. Under Win2k there's a registry hack (documented on M$s site) but you'll have a maximum partition size of 137GB. Windows XP uses 48-bit addressing by default.

Debian and most other Linux distros will work fine, as long as you re-install them with your new HD.

Civilian_Target

gobby

Originally posted by Civilian_Target

Windows XP uses 48-bit addressing by default.

not true. you need sp1 for win xp to support 48-LBA.

Civilian_Target

My OEM version of Windows XP home that came with my hard disk worked out of the box.

The version of XP Pro that came with my other computer also worked out of the box.

Go figure.

Gerry

Well, I think its worth a try before you put any important data on it.
I have an ancient mobo ( latest bios is 2000 ), and it refuses to boot if the ide channel for my 80gig drive is set to anything but "none" in the bios. This was ok because I have another drive to boot from, and once booted, the OS detects the 80gig. But I wanted to put on fedora linux yesterday, and after making the partitions on the 80 gig I remembered that I wouldn't be able to boot from it.
I tried installing grub on the boot drive, but it couldn't see the other drive.
So I had the brainwave of putting the 32gb clip on the 80gig drive, configuring it in the bios, then removing the clip, and hey presto it works. Maybe something similar will work for you..

astrofool

whats the best way of installing a new 160gig drive into a new system with the xp pro (non sp1) cd ? is it even possible ? (assume system has only 1 hd)

Mutant_Fruit

AStrofool: Thats exactly what i did. I wanted windows on my new 160gb harddrive, as my 80gb is 5400rpm, and the new one is 7200.

So i slotted in the drive and opened up my dos partitioning program (fdisk will do). From there i made a 5gb partition, and formatted that to NTFS and installed windows on it. Then, after doing that, i installed SP1 (which i had downloaded earlier). After doing that, i installed Datalifeguard (which i spoke of earlier). When that starts up for the first time, it will automatically do the registry hack, if it needs to be done, thus enabling large disc support. Then, after a reboot, i used the built in partiton manager in Windows XP to make a second partition on my 160gb drive, which used the remaining 155gb's.

And its worked perfectly ever since.

If the chipset only supports 28-bit addressing, all the OS patches in the world won't help you. These days, it's crazy to buy anything that doesn't support ATA133 out of the box.

Isn;t the whole point of this method so that motherboards that don't support large drives can still use the large drives?

EDIT: Your motherboard must support 48bit addressing, this can usually be done with a quick flashing of a new bios. More info here

Tenshot

Isn't the whole point of this method so that motherboards that don't support large drives can still use the large drives?

Well, that would mean they do support large drives then

I did a bit of poking around, and found the original proposal for adding 48-bit addressing here. It's quite clever actually in that it implements it in a way that will allow correct operation on older drives even if they are accessed using 48-bit addressing too. However, there are some extra features etc.

The key point is that the dedicated Windows driver for the motherboard IDE chipset needs to use 48-bit addressing, which is what the various OS patches enable.

It was mentioned earlier, but worth saying again: it's perfectly possible to use a 160 GB drive on a system that has the 137 GB limit -- all that happens is that when you exceed 137 GB, it wraps back to zero again and starts overwriting your bootsector and partition table; the next time you boot the disk, you'll be in for a nasty surprise.

po0k

Originally posted by Tenshot
all that happens is that when you exceed 137 GB, it wraps back to zero again and starts overwriting your bootsector and partition table; the next time you boot the disk, you'll be in for a nasty surprise.

I like to call those moments in life "Happy-Happy Joy-Joy" times.