WD 200 Gb HD only displays 137Gb

[duane123]

How could I have gotten this HD installed incorrectly so as to not work over the 137Gb barrier? I purchased it early 2000s before Win XP would work with large Gb drives and WD included a SIIG Ultra ATA TX2 PCI card with the retail boxed 200Gb HD. NOW I am moving it to another PC and realize it is not reflecting its full capability. I downloaded the latest SIIG driver, but when I go to Device Mgr, IDE/ATA controllers, it says Primary, Secondary and SiS controller - so I am confused (isn't SiS different than SIIG)? I tried unintalling and reinstalling the SiS driver and when I pointed it to the latest driver from the internet that I extracted and it says the current one is the latest (6/26/02). I am running Win XP Home, SP2 with all updates, P4 - at 2.4Ghz, 2Gb RAM, P4S8X Mobo. The primary and secondary ATA channels are used so I wanted to insert this extra HF for video backups and just now realizing that it never showed more than the 137Gb, even though it is a 200Gb drive. I think a couple of years ago I queried WD about the low readinge and they pointed me to a FAQ that describes why it would show 186Gb for a 200Gb disk - I blew it off and didn't think about the 137Gb barrier at that time. Any ideas how I can "RESET" this drive to it's full 200 Gb? Do I have to temporaily put in on the primary ATA channel and reformt it to see the full 200GB, and then move it back to the master position on the ULTRA TX2?

 

[wahnula]

duane123,

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/303013

How to enable 48-bit Logical Block Addressing support for ATAPI disk drives in Windows XP

isn't SiS different than SIIG

Yes. SiS is the board's chipset driver and I believe SIIG is a sound driver.

Tony

 

[duane123]

This PC already has a functioning C; drive of 40Gb and a secondary drive of 250Gb which is recognized properly and formatted to NTFS. I would have to assume that Mobo BIOS and Win XP Home SP2 both recognize 48 bit LBA. Why is only the new 200Gb drive stuck on 137GB? Since it was purchased back in about 2002 before Win XP had the 48 bit LBA and WD supplied a Ultra ATA TX2 card to hook it up to, do you think there is something unique in the drive itself that needs to be RESET?

 

[wahnula]

I own a P4S8X. There is a third PATA connector, correct? Have you tried using it? Maybe the Promise firmware is the problem, check for updates if you must use the card.

When connected to primary IDE, what does the BIOS say about the 200GB drive?

 

[duane123]

I could try the 3rd PATA, but in the manual it says it is for a RAID combined PATA/SATA set up. I don't understand RAID enough and do not know which version I would want anyway, so have stayed away from connecting that up. Think you need to use an ASUS utility to configure the use of that PATA channel(??)

 

[wahnula]

First, back everything up. I do not have the reference on hand but there is no harm in hooking the new dirve to that Third port and at least see if BIOS sees it.

If so, you should be able to format in Disk Mismanagement. You may have to reconfigure the BIOS to use that bus as another IDE bus.

Worst case, you do a "repair install (second repair prompt) and add the F6 drivers from the CD or Net. you do have (2) SATA connectors on the board also. A 320Gb 7200.10 SATA 16MB brand new is $79... You might need to create a single-drive Arrays in RAID BIOS to use the drive...keep us posted

 

[blakey2]

Hi Duane123,

How does the BIOS report the size of the drive?
Are all specifications correct?

(Maybe you have to access the SIIG cards bios type interface to check this?)

Assuming the BIOS/SIIG sees it correctly, then it would seem to be an operating system issue.

if you open up disk management - run -> mmc -> add template -> add template -> Disk Management (Something like that) does it report the drive as 200GB (or 186GB for file overhead, 1000MB=1GB conversion etc..?) OR does it show that the drive is 100% utilised being 137 GB in size..?

If it is the former, rather than the latter, I think you can just create a partition to grab the unused space, else try resizing the 137GB partition using partition magic or similar. I'm pretty sure GPARTED will resize NTFS partitions and is freeware, though there is a free version of partition magic too from reccolection..

I digress.

If the latter is the case, then I'm pretty sure that you would need to format it to realise the space. if you wanted to be sure, I'd disconnect the 250GB drive, run the 200GB drive off its port (as a slave drive), boot into windows from the 40GB drive and format it there.

If that failed, i'd disconnect the 40GB drive (as well as the 250 GB drive), run the 200GB drive as master and boot from the windows CD, format the drive there and see how she went.

Bit of a ramble. Cheers.

 

[gbaughma]

Why is only the new 200Gb drive stuck on 137GB?

1) Look for a jumper on the drive.
2) Make sure the drive is formatted for NTFS, and not FAT32.
3) Check your BIOS settings, and try turning on LBA.
4) Update your BIOS.



Just my 2¢
-ARRGH! All my clothes are wrinkled! Oh, the irony!

--Greg

http://parallel.tzo.com

 

[Freestone]

My money is on the TX2 controller, especially since it NEVER showed more than 137GB on the attached drive.

Moved the suspect drive off the TX2 card and place it as a slave on one of the motherboard IDE channels. Boot XP and look in Disk Management. Bet you see all 200GB.

 

[Glenn9999]

As for the board itself, you might try flashing the BIOS if it's running a version less than 1003A - the Asus site indicates that the board should support the full 200GB from 1003A onward.

http://support.asus.com.tw/technicaldocuments/technicaldocuments_content.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&NO=501

 

[duane123]

Hi blakey2 (MIS)

How does the BIOS report the size of the drive?

The BIOS does not see the 3rd drive (I think because it is connected to the PCI Ultra SIIG card - the card perhaps not seen during BIOS bootup???)

if you open up disk management - run -> mmc -> add template -> add template -> Disk Management (Something like that) does it report the drive as 200GB (or 186GB for file overhead, 1000MB=1GB conversion etc..?) OR does it show that the drive is 100% utilised being 137 GB in size..?

It shows it as 137Gb. I used the disk management to completly reformt the drive thinking it would reset it to its full capacity - but no, it was still 137Gb after finishing. I did not try to create a partiion, but rather am going to attach as slave on the Primary IDE channel and bypass that SIIG card to see if it will recognize the full 200Gb.

Hi wahnula
I own a P4S8X. There is a third PATA connector, correct? Have you tried using it? Maybe the Promise firmware is the problem, check for updates if you must use the card.

I connected it to the RAID PATA connector and the BIOS did not see it. Win XP Disk Management and Win Explorer could not see the drive either.

My next step it to swap it out with the current slave HD and see if I can reformat to 200Gb on that channel.

 

[duane123]

I was able to recover the missing 58Gb after installing it temporaily as the slave on the primary IDE channel. I formatted that unallocated partion and re-installed the drive on the SIIG TX2 PCI ATA card. Now when windows XP opens up it is slow as a snail and I have to walk away and come back after just requesting to open the disk management panel or for a window explorer to open. It is slower than the first PC I owned in the late 1980s. When I am able to get the disk manager open it shows the three drives - primary C:\ drive is "system", the secondary drive is "active" and the new "128Gb"((F, and 58Gb (G drives are listed as "healthy". The PC is so slow when I click on the task mgr, CPU column I cannot see it respond - when it finally does it shows the idle process at 97-99%. How can I find what is slowing it down? As I am sitting here writing this, it is trying to finish displaying the task mgr down on the bottom tool bar, and the mail display still shows half the task mgr even though I minimized it.

 

[Freestone]

What is currently taking up space on either onboard IDE channel slave position? If either is a CD-ROM drive, try putting the CD-ROM drive on the TX2 card and the 200GB drive in the IDE slave position.

I think the TX2 card is either not capable of 48-bit LBA or it is not fully compatible with your current XP setup.

 

[duane123]

Agreed - the TX2 card must not be capable even though in 2003 WD provided it "as the solution to the 137Gb barrier"!! If its BIOS needs updating I have no clue how to get at it. Upon bootup it always displays the BIOS verison of the Promise/SIIG/SiS Ultra TX2 card. Inside windows XP there is a driver that I tried to update but it told me I had the most current one. Cannot figure out how to access the BIOS.

At this point I will just use this extra 200 Gb HD in my net disk set up even though that is such a slow beast. The TX2 card is going to the PC grave yard.

It was definately a challenge, but only so much time can be spent on these things.

Thanks for all the ideas and inputs.