Formatting Hardrive

[zuperdominican]

I have never installed a drive larger than 120 GB one an older system I have lying around. I was wondering, how exactly do I go about formatting a 250 GB HD on a motherboard that cannot recognize anything larger than 137? I want to make sure that I know what I am doing before I go out and buy the HD.

 

[wolluf]

If you want to use a drive > max size mobo recognises (and you want it all to be available, not just 137GB), and there's no bios upgrade available to fix this, then you've only 2 options really:-

1. Use overlay software (usually available from drive manufacturer's site - eg maxblast for Maxtor) - NOT recommended - causes future problems.

2. Buy a PCI controller card (which will recognise full size of drive) to connect drive to. Best option.

 

[zuperdominican]

If I partition a 250 into a 130 and 120 won't the mobo recognize both partitions simultaneously?

 

[wolluf]

NO!

You can only partition what the bios can see - so if it can only see 137GB, that's all that's available to partition.

And if you partitioned it in another machine which does see whole drive and then moved it to this machine - same thing.

 

[micker377]

zuperdominican:
What is your definition of "simultaneously"? You would have the equivilent of a 120 drive, and a 130 drive.

My 160gig drive is partitioned into four 40gig partitions under Fat32.

 

[zuperdominican]

Is the 160GB HD that is partitioned into four 40GB partitions recognized by a motherboard that does not recognize over 137GB???
That is what I plan to do, if it works, partition the 250GB HD into partitions smaller than 137GB.

 

[wolluf]

http://www.48bitlba.com/faq.htm#FAQ1

 

[micker377]

137gig?:

Yes, I'm running XP/SP-2 (but it ran OK this way before I even had SP-1).