Maxtor 160Gb drive showing up as 120Gb ?

[sebjenkins]

Hi,

I recently purchased a DiamondMax Plus 10 160Gb hard drive.

When I installed it into my PC, the BIOS only sees it as a 120Gb ?

I spoke to my supplier who said that its not a problem with the motherboard or the BIOS as the PC supports hard drives up to 250Gb.

Has anybody else seen this problem ?

 

[Wishdiak]

sebjenkins,

Does your drive show as only 120GB during POST, or is it showing as only 120GB in Windows?

https://maxtor.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/maxtor.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=960

Wishdiak
A+, Network+, Security+, MCSA: Security 2003

http://www.wishdiak.com

 

[cdogg]

Can you supply us with the exact size that's being reported?

The limit with older 24-bit IDE extensions is that hard drive support maxes out at 137.4GB. To go further, both the BIOS and OS must support 48-bit LBA. Usually a BIOS upgrade and/or applying the latest update in your OS solves this problem (but not always).

http://www.48bitlba.com

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[DavidNL]

Hi, I'm David, I joined this forum just now. I'm certainly not an expert, but I know enough to get by building and installing pc's. However, I've come across the same problem as mentioned here... That is to say - a friend of mine just bought a new k8nf-9 with a Maxtor diamondmax 10 200GB SATA disk. I helped him build and install... but... only 137.4G. I really don't know why, I've flashed the bios to latest version but that doesn't do any good! So help or suggestions will be appreciated!

p.s. the problem wouldn't by any chance be solved if I install XP /sp2 would it? Since the post originally only sees 137.4G?

please help!

 

[jurgen36]

Fdisk and format the drive with a win98SE boot floppy.
Xp will then see the whole drive and can work with it. I had to do this with my 4 300 Gbyte drives. XP can not format bigger drives then 137 Gbytes, it is actually a step backwards from 98SE, but they want to push their ntsf drives.
Regards

Jurgen

 

[Freestone]

Yes, installing SP2 should cure this problem, assuming the motherboard BIOS sees the entire 200GB. XP requires at least SP1 in order to support drives greater than 137.4 GB. In addition, a motherboards BIOS must also support 48-bit LBA.

See

http://www.48bitlba.com/winxp.htm

 

[cdogg]

If NTFS is chosen as the file format and you are using a WinXP SP1 or later disc, then you should be fine using the Windows setup to format the drive.

However, you don't usually want one large partition. Generally, you make a smaller one for the system partition.

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884