XP sp1 and large HD setup

[katman96]

I am installing XP pro w/sp1 on a 200 gig hd. My current bios does not support the large hard drive it has the 137 gig limit.

Should I let the XP install format the whole drive (200 gig) and then install XP? I believe you can do this, as XP sp1 installs large drive support as a default. Or should I format the drive smaller, load xp and then in xp configure the rest of the drive?

 

[bcastner]

137 gig is a FAT32 limitation.

I am not sure what you want to do with the drive. If you want to partition it, rather than a single volume, there are choices you can make under Install to do this.

If you want to use NTFS as the filestore in a single volume, that is possible too.

See linney's compilation of the important MS KB articles to guide you: thread779-856918

Whatever you do, resist the temptation to add a third-party disk management add-in to work around any drive issues as to the sizing of a volume.

 

[katman96]

Yes I learned the hard way about disk overlay software. I installed the Seagate version and I ended up having to do a low level format (fill the drive with 0's ...took about 36 hours) to get rid of it.

I want to use the drive as a single NTFS volume. I should be good to go, letting XP sp1 do it from from the start, from what I have read.

 

[bcastner]

Read all of the links that linney offered in my original thread reference, but yes, you should be good to go.

Bill Castner

 

[wolluf]

katman96

'My current bios does not support the large hard drive it has the 137 gig limit.'

This confused me. If the bios will not see > 137GB, then aren't you stuck with 137GB until you either upgrade bios (if available) or add controller card/change motherboard?

XP pre-SP1 also has a similar limitation as it doesn't have 48 bit LBA support - but even though NT based O/s tend to ignore the bios, I think you might have a problem here. I'd definitely make sure my hardware/bios can handle the drive size before starting to use it.

 

[katman96]

The way I understand it.. XP sp1 has the 48 bit lba support, I was thinking this would "override" the bios issue. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

I believe this was more of an issue with XP w/o sp1

 

[wolluf]

Generally you need the bios/mobo to be able to recognise the full size of a drive before attempting to install an operating system - if you want to use the full size of the drive. I know NT based o/s ignore the bios to some extent once they are up and running (eg, if you have a connected slave drive set to 'no drive' in bios, NT/2k/XP will still see the drive) - but I don't know if they can override bios limitations - especially with the boot drive (and I would rather not test this out on a machine I was using for real - might test it sometime). Currently, when you boot machine, only 137Gb of the drive is visible when bios transfers control to XP boot process. If you really intend continuing without sorting your bios/hardware situation, I suggest you do some more research - eg

http://www.pcguide.com/index.htm.

Personally I would make sure my machine can cope with 200Gb drive before installing o/s etc on it.

 

[bfralia]

If your bios doesn't recognize the 200 GB drive as 200GB, you'll probably have to use something like Promise Technologies interface card. It emulates a SCSI card to the computer.