Windows 2000 48-bit LBA

The D865PERL is 48-bit compliant.  It's what my own XP system runs on.

The procedure described is close but won't do the job, because when the saved image is restored it won't have the registry patch in it.  I would:

Back up the system.
Apply the patch to the original 120 GB drive.
Reboot.
Attach the 250 GB drive.
Use a drive cloning tool, either online or offline, to clone the 120 GB drive to the 250 GB drive.
Detach the 120 GB drive.  Set the system to boot from the 250 GB drive.
Copy some big video files onto the 250 GB drive until it has more than 150 GB of files on it.  Check the first and last files copied to confirm that they are intact.  If they are, the 48-bit patch was successful - delete all the video files.
Defrag the drive.
Upgrade successful.

Side note:  It would be prudent to take a permanent marker and mark the system drive "W2K LBA48 PATCH APPLIED" or something similar.

Great advice!  Good point about theWhat's the BIOS on your D865PERL?

So, to paraphrase the steps:
1) make sure I have an image of the original 125GB hard drive.
2) Do the registry edit on the 125GB hard drive.
3) Make an image of the edited system on the 125GB hard drive.
4) Install the new hard drive and format it.
5) Restore the image from step 3 to the new hard drive
6) Test with large video files
7) clean up

An alternate approach which seems like it would be less risky and troublesome would be this:
1) Assure there's an image of the original drive.
1) shrink the existing partition on the 250GB hard drive to 125GB. (C:)
2) Restore the disk image to this partition if necessary
3) add a 125GB partition. (D:)
4) move a large chunk of data From C: to D:
(Leave everything else alone).
Does this sound OK to you?  It avoids the 48-bit LBA problem altogether, right?  It appears this configuration will serve this system for years into the future.

... and just to confirm:  48-bit LBA issues are purely internal and not an issue for external USB hard drives that may be attached?

i hope you read the info in the aritcle i posted in the old Q?

nobus:  Yes, good article.  But is that a yes or a no or ....  But I can read it again - it has no mention of USB.

48-bit LBA is still an issue for USB drives.  The only way to address above 137 GB is with 48-bit addressing.

I would not put a 250 GB drive on a system that is not capable of 48-bit addressing.  At some point someone who doesn't know this tiger is lurking in the shadows will say "Well let's use the rest of the 250 GB drive", and Chaos will ensue ... but only after the disk is well and truly corrupt.

Dr. Klahn:

48-bit LBA is still an issue for USB drives.  

I would not have thought so.  I had understood that the 48-bit addressing is for the ATA interface only.  The USB is on PCI.  No?  I'm sorry to be so pedantic but this is a very important issue and I need to make sure I get it right.
nobus:  Ah!  Yes, I'd figured that out or knew it or ....  FAT32 isn't in the picture here so I'd not focused on that today.  Thanks for clarifying for me!

Dr. Klahn:  

The D865PERL is 48-bit compliant.  It's what my own XP system runs on.

That's good to know but I understand it's also dependent on the BIOS.  This one has AMI BIOS AMI BIOS 08.00.10 of 04/02/04 and I've not yet found the information to do that confirmation.  So, if you can confirm that *this* BIOS is compliant, that would be great!

Dr. Klahn:  Thanks!  I did find the Intel documentation but it wasn't very clear about this.  Surely that's because I'm unable to translate their English into my English when I'm trying to be *very* particular.  So this information helps a lot.

I agree about not updating the BIOS - "if it ain't broke don't fix it".  I can't find the same BIOS information and, as above, I can't interpret it anyway.

The remaining thing I wonder about:
If we were to do the Registry edit of EnableBigLba to make the necessary 48-bit LBA work in Windows 2000, I wonder if would it change anything or just be like an "added permission or connection" sort of thing.  I have the current system hard drive backed up with an image so I suppose that's safe enough.  But I don't have a whole lot of availability to experiment.  This Microsoft page implies it will be OK:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/305098/48-bit-lba-support-for-atapi-disk-drives-in-windows-2000
by saying:

After you enable 48-bit LBA support by adding the appropriate registry key, data corruption may occur if you remove the registry key or if you remove (uninstall) SP3 for Windows 2000.

and this part is also interesting:

{IF} The EnableBigLba registry value is disabled:
The operating system must be installed on the first partition that is less than or equal to 137 GB and the rest of the hard disk divided into one or more remaining partitions when the EnableBigLba registry value is enabled on a computer without a 48-bit LBA compatible BIOS that has a hard disk with a capacity of more than 137 GB.

Note: it doesn't say if there's a size limit on the additional partitions.

Once the 48-bit LBA key is installed the drive size limit becomes 2000 GB for both FAT32 and NTFS under Windows 2000.  imo, It is unlikely that a Windows 2000 system still alive will ever use as much as 1000 GB unless it is doing video editing.

Thanks!