WinXP and large hard drives

yossarin

Hi all,

have a bit of a problem with my new pc.
I just got a 300 GB HD.
However, doing an install of winXP the install partitioning tool cannot recognise more than 137GB of space. Large disk mode is enabled (bios recognises 300.1 GB), its just the OS that is being stupid.

has anyone come across this ? Its windows not properly recognising the drive size. anyone know a fix ?

ARGINITE

dont install the os to 300Gb partition. if the os dies and you need to do a reinstall, you will end up formatting your entire drive and every thing on it. so split up the drive.
Its xp fault btw.

moridin

Max NTFS volume size is 2TB linky.

It could be that the installer won't create a larger primary partition than your 137GB.

Personally, I'd go with ARGINITE on this one and install windows on a 30Gb FAT32 partition, because:

a) If something goes wrong you can use DOS to read the files
b) If you need to re-install windows you can format the partition and not lose all the data on your "storage" partition.

Stephen

I would install to an NTFS partition rather than to FAT32. These days there are plenty of tools (such as Bart PE, Linux CD's etc) that will allow you to mount NTFS partitions in the event of a disaster. FAT32 doesn't support setting security permissions etc on your files, so it really sucks in that way.

Astro1996

Partiton magic

yossarin

Hi all,

It could be that the installer won't create a larger primary partition than your 137GB.

thats it - it seems that XP pre service pack 1 doesn't recognise more than 137GB at a time.

MrPinK

I usually stick XP on it's own small partition, 6Gig or so. After installation, nothing else is goes on this partition. All documents, programme files, music, etc. go on seperate partitions. Then when I (inevitably) need to reinstall XP I don't have to worry about losing anything. I just have to reinstall some programmes, but old save games, settings files, etc. will all still be there.

Random

Search the MS help database for a patch to enable large disk support.

Alternatively tools like maxblast (from maxtor and it's free) enable large disk support in Windows.

yossarin

cheers ciaranfo,
will try that tonight.

jessy

moridin wrote:

a) If something goes wrong you can use DOS to read the files

He said he's using XP (i.e. No DOS)

yossarin wrote:

Hi all,


thats it - it seems that XP pre service pack 1 doesn't recognise more than 137GB at a time.

Not true as some one has already said XP used NTFS which supports up to 2T, and i have already partitioned a 250 gig drive.


my advice is install XP on whatever space is available, then once you can boot into windows install Partition magic and from there you can reclaim the space that is not formatted.

Coupe

XP won't recognise a drive bigger than 137mb until SP1 is installed!

Capt'n Midnight

Re suggestions to resize the drive after XP is installed - don't !
if XP won't install then it probably won't reinstall

best advice is still a system partition for the OS and data on a separate partition, one other advantage is that your swap file should be slightly faster.

iMax

I have a large drive enabler that's excellent, let me know if you want it (64k)

yossarin

hey,

iMax - that'd be great to try - send it to andrew.butterly@gmail.com.nospam please (remove the nospam ).

also, a warning to go with ciaranfos post: make sure you have the correct version of maxblast for your HD - otherwise the results are less shiney.

current postion: installed winXP on a small partition and created another 90 gig one. can't get the rest of the drive to be recognised. oh, and also installed a tv tuner box with remote control . Its recording todays simpsons for me

Blitzkrieger

I read about a similar problem - you need to update something to get more than 137GB. I'll look it up 2nite if I remember.

iMax

Sent it yassarin.

Oddly enough outlook express removed the nospam automatically...