Win XP Won't Recognize All Of 200 GB Hard Drive

XP needs SP1 to see the entire hard drive, it has a 130 gig limit, you need to get SP1 installed before XP will allow you to use all of your drive.

Joe

Additionally, Microsoft cautions that if you format beyond the 127.99 gig space and try to use it, it could become unstable without sp1.  I'm not sure how true this is, because I simply upgraded to sp1 upon seeing this news.

Joe

Go and get from the western digital patch for the xp to allow more than the 130 Gig. just u will get in trouble if you need to reinstall OS again, well at mate the setup didnt like of the big partition, so he had to do some playing around and install Os on smaller disk and etc.

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=928&p_created=1049320914&p_sid=-JkV5Bmh&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPSZwX3NvcnRfYnk9JnBfZ3JpZHNvcnQ9JnBfcm93X2NudD03MzImcF9wYWdlPTE*&p_li=

Question
  Why is the full capacity of EIDE drives larger than 137GB (128GB binary) not recognized in Windows 2000/XP?

Resolution
48-bit LBA support is necessary for drives larger than 137GB (128GB binary). The following conditions are necessary for the correct functioning of 48-bit LBA support in Windows 2000/XP:

Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1) must be installed for Windows XP versions prior to August 2002. For information about SP1, see Microsoft Article 322389.


The system must have a 48-bit LBA-compatible Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) installed. This includes EIDE controller card BIOSs.


You must enable the support in the Windows registry.

The Microsoft Knowledge Base articles listed below provide important information about 48-bit LBA support for drives larger than 137GB in Windows. For full details, carefully review the relevant article.

48-bit LBA Support for ATAPI Disk Drives in Windows 2000.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;305098

How to Enable 48-bit Logical Block Addressing Support for ATAPI Disk Drives in Windows XP.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;303013

Note: The above articles reference making necessary registry changes. It is strongly advised that you contact Microsoft directly for assistance.

I have SP 1 and SP 2 installed. I also have the latest BIOS from ASUS. The registry setting Microsoft talks about "EnableBigLba" doesn't exist in the registry, (I searched) I think I'm going to have to use XP's partition or something like "Partition Magic"


                        Thanks For The Help

                                           Gary C. Thompson


                                                          <email removed by Lunchy>

I had this issue till I installed SP1, try deleting the 127 gig partition and re-creating it full size.

Below is a screen cap of my drive, showing total size 306 GB

http://www.friendly-geek.com/ebay/largedrv.jpg


Joe

The easiest solution is to have a Bootable windows xp cd with SP1 or SP2 already in it. Then you can boot and you will be able to see the 200 gig as one parition. Using an 'old' (non sp1) bootable win xp will only recognize the 128 gig limit due to limitation within that windows version.

If you have problems with Diskpart.exe just use Partition Magic to increase the partition as large as you want.

127.99 + 54 = 181.99
but you hard drive is supposed to be 200 GB, right?

here's the explanation:

Most operating systems define a hard disk drives capacity using binary or base-2 mathematics. This translates to 1 gigabyte (GB) equal to 1,073,741,824 bytes. This is the correct value when using binary or base-2 mathematics.

However, hard disk drive manufacturers define drive sizes using base-10 mathematics, in which 1 GB is equal to 1,000,000,000 bytes (rather than the 1,073,741,824 bytes, as listed above).

This discrepancy in reporting drive sizes (base-2 vs. base-10) may lead you to believe that you have a hard disk drive of less than expected capacity if you compare the figure reported by the operating system with the figure reported by your documentation, although the actual hard drive size is identical. Microsoft® Windows® simply counts the size differently, and will report a different, slightly smaller, figure.


so basically the hard drive manufacturers and the OS programmers used different bases that led to the discrepancy.
hope this helps!!

Mico  :  )

The Diskpart.exe solution wont work on a basic disk. And if your converting to a dynamic disk, why not use the GUI?
I would recommend geting a copy of partition magic, but if you want a pure MS windows solution here it is:

In the Computer Management->Disk Management right click on the HD and convert to Dynamic Disk.
Then right click on the Partition and choose extend partition.

Note: after converting the disk to a dynamic disk, it will not be readable in other OSes (only in windows 2000\XP)

ezraa,
The diskpart solution will work on a basic this, extending a basic partition to unallocated space is possible with diskpart, for all other changes you make with diskpart you need a dynamic disk.

LucF

LucF,

I tried to extend a basic volume on my system and it didn't work (XP SP2).
also in the help is states:
> If an NTFS volume resides on a hardware RAID 5 container that has the
> capability of adding space to the container, you can extend the NTFS Volume
> with Diskpart.exe while the disk remains a Basic disk.
Translated that means that if its a normal IDE HD (not on a RAID 5 container) you can't extend the voulme with Diskpart.exe while the disk remains a Basic disk.

- ezraa

ezraa,
Ok, in your case I'm not sure what went wrong, it has always suited me nicely on both win2k and winXP systems.

LucF

I wonder if the partitions were in the category of "Partition" or "Dynamic" and if initialization was activated!

I think you've probably got your answer but here it is again from my experience. Abviously if your BIOS won't detect beyond the 137Gb limit you are in trouble and need to update that if possible. Once that is done you need to make sure that Windows XP has at least SP1 installed to fix a problem with drives of that size. No rpoblems here with that setup and I have a 160Gb SATA drive and a 200Gb SATA drive. Deleet any existing partitions adnd redo them after installing SP1 or SP2. It should work fine from then on.

Also of course you won't get a full 200Gb becuase of the way hard drive manufactureres falsely define a megabyte as 1,000,000 bytes. (probably a 200Gb drive will format to about 186Gb) but you should be able to have a single partition as I have.

If you have previously used the drive makers setup disk to initially do your setup make sure you haven't limited it in there to 137Gb.

Easiest solution: have a partitioned drive. Not sure why anyone would need a single 200gig partition anyway. Other than buying software like Partition Magic, a hardware solution could be to install secondary hard disk using xpsp2, using that to then format 200gig primary hdd. I have no idea if Xp would install on a preformatted 200gb partition though.

had this same problem. Needed to apply a patch from the manufacturer of my 250 gig hard drive (maxtor). After that, it showed up correctly. CHeck WDs site

Well I did have 200GB Maxtor as well same thing happened but

ones u put service pack 1 that will resolve the issue or if you have a raid controller you dont even need service pack


Regards,,

You can do this way and I make sure it works fine. Plug your 200 Gig harddrive into a system (it should have better chipset like Intel 875 and up) as slave drive, and do format there. Then, install back to your system and install windows. Now, you should see full capacity drive.

From the posts, the mentioned drive is an internal Western Digital 200 GB Caviar SE.

I have had similar issues with a 200Gb Seagate Barracuda 7200 model: ST3200822A. Win Xp Sp2, but this was in an external usb case and would see only 186Gb so past the usual limits.

No matter what i did all test came up physically fine using seagates DiscWizard and in the end i had to send the drive back to seagate as they have a policy for 5yrs on these drives. http://www.seagate.com/support/service/index.html

Hope this may help on yours.
wayne

If the Start/cmd/diskpart.exe does not work out for you, try using Patrition Magic. It's an exellent program.
If you like it you can get a license for about 39.99 or something similar. There is also an enterprise edition
available, but you have to buy a redistribution licesnce which costs from 399.99 to about 20,000 USD. I think
it's a little cheaper in europe but currency exchange makes up for it =). So anyways if you have Hard Drives
over 200GB, here are your choices

   1) Go to Start/cmd/diskpart.exe, like posted before me.
   2) Install Windows XP SP1 or SP2.
   3) Download a trial version of Patrition Magic.

                                                          If you have any questions on raid controllers or data recovery, you
                                                                                                can e-mail me at <email removed by Lunchy>