Trouble adding new large HDD (160GB) 1

[RustyMajor]

I have an old ASUS P4S533 Motherboard and I'm trying to add a new large hard drive to it, but the OS will only recognize 137GB. I know this is due to the 48bit LBA issue, but I can't get past it.

I have confirmed this board and the BIOS I am on (1010) will support large drives. In fact, the BIOS recognizes it properly. When I get into windows, it will not see past 137GB, though.

I have applied Windows 2000 SP4 and added the LBA registry key as suggest in KB article here:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;305098

Each time I get into Disk Management, it greets me with the unformatted capacity of 128GB.

Help me here, I'm going crazy!
Thanks!!!

 

[RustyMajor]

Wanted to follow this up to say that I have a different external USB drive that is 200GB and it is showing up properly, but it was previously formatted under a different system.

I'm confused why the IDE drive is not showing up correctly?

 

[wahnula]

Here's a view from another angle...is the drive in your USB box PATA as well? Have you tried removing it, placing the new one in the USB case temporarily, and formatting it over USB?

I ask this because as I was researching this issue I found a few reports where Win2K was not reporting the correct size, but the space was there and usable anyway.

If you can get your PC to recognize the new drive in the external box and verify the size, and then format it, I'm curious if Win2K would then recognize it.

Another angle would be to install the external drive into the mainboard's PATA connector but external drives are usually backup and I would NOT recommend this if such is the case.

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[RustyMajor]

Thanks Tony, I'll give both of those suggestions a try and report back.

 

[Freestone]

What Service Pack level is your Windows 2000 at? Must be at SP3 or later in order for the EnableBigLba registry value to be effective.

 

[wahnula]

Freestone:

I have applied Windows 2000 SP4...

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[Freestone]

Tony,

I must have my glasses prescription checked.

Dell

 

[RustyMajor]

Hey guys, thanks for the help, but I couldn't get it to work. I ended up installing it and using the 128gb or whatever of usable space, so I think I lost about 20 or so gig of useable space.

I did try it under the USB hub and it did show up as the full 160gb. I moved it back to the onboard IDE and it was back at 137gb. I believe it is my SiS chipset but when I tried to upgrade the drivers, i had issues. That's the point I gave up.

I appreciate the help and I'll give you a star for the effort.

 

[cdogg]

If you decide to take another shot, I would suggest installing the SiS Bus Master IDE driver (v2.02) first:

http://dlsvr.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/sock478/p4s533/IDE20202.zip

Then I would reboot and follow that up by installing the newest SiS Mini IDE driver(v2.04a):

http://dlsvr.asus.com/pub/ASUS/misc/ide/siside204a.ZIP

I know you've tried some driver(s) already, but doing it in this particular order might make the difference. Also just so you know, those links were pulled for the P4S533 model.

And finally as another workaround, get your hands on a Windows XP CD, boot from it, and go through the setup as if you are going to do a new installation of Windows. When you get to the screen that looks like this:

http://www.theeldergeek.com/hard_drives_03.htm

...you'll see a "Windows 2000" partition (your old drive) and you'll also see the one you created on the new drive. Delete the one you made before on the new drive. When you return to the initial screen, you should see 149GB of unallocated space (the 160GB drive is actually 149 "true" gigabytes). Here, you should be able to create a new partition using all the space. Exit the Windows setup obviously without installing XP. When you boot back into 2000, you should be good to go as long as that "EnableBigLba" is set to 1 - hopefully!

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Einstein
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