Hard drive partitioning

[darkbenny]

I recenlty purchased a new 250 IDE HDD.

I installed in in my PC, set it to master and removed my old one. I formatted the new drive to install Windows but upon installation I saw in Windows that the drive is a mere 127 GB now.

I installed from Windows Xp Home and have yet to install SP1 or 2 updates. My question is, how do I go about allowing windows to accept my drive closer to its targeted size? I know space is lost through formatting, but this is ridiculous. Does Windows not have support for drives greater than 127 GB? What shall I do folks?

[Jipcy]

I'm not very familiar with XP Home. Do you know what file system you installed with? As far as I know, NTFS has no problem with large hard drives.

Your BIOS may have trouble with large hard drives. You might look into a BIOS update.

[darkbenny]

NTSF is how I formatted.

Could it be anything other than the BIOS? I am somewhat leery about updating that.

[odditude]

48-bit LBA support wasn't added into Windows XP until SP1. This means your version of Windows doesn't support drives over 128GB (~137GB counted decimally, like how it is on hard drive packages).

If you'd like to use the whole drive, you should either

1) Slipstream SP1 or SP2 onto your Windows CD, reboot off your new CD, and format + reinstall, or...

2) Install SP1 or SP2 on your current installation and then use Partition Magic or some other similar tool to resize the existing partition.

IIRC, Windows 2000 added in 48-bit addressing in SP3 - anyone with a similar problem with Win2K can use the above as well as long as they apply SP3 or later.

[Deathlike2]

This check is two-fold:

Make sure the BIOS detects the complete size of the HD. If it only detects 137GB only, then you will HAVE to flash/update the BIOS.

On the second front, you MUST use XP SP1 or later in order to partition the hd to it's full capacity.

[odditude]

Make sure the BIOS detects the complete size of the HD. If it only detects 137GB only, then you will have to flash/update the BIOS.

If you run into the situation where you have an older motherboard that simply won't support large drives (ie hardware is too old/decaying or there simply aren't any applicable BIOS updates), you can always pick up a separate ATA controller card. You can get them for $30 or less. The only trick with them is remembering you have to add the drivers in during the text-mode part of Windows Setup (ie you need to have the drivers on an F6 floppy).

[darkbenny]

Thanks fo rthe quick replies. I will install SP2 and see if I can reformat to the max size.

This may sound like a dumb question, but how do I check what the BIOS recognizes the HDD size as? (Is the size listed somewhere within the BIOS?)

[Deathlike2]

Thanks fo rthe quick replies. I will install SP2 and see if I can reformat to the max size.

This may sound like a dumb question, but how do I check what the BIOS recognizes the HDD size as? (Is the size listed somewhere within the BIOS?)

Modern BIOSes tell you the size. If worse comes to worse, you should try to note the settings on the hd (usually they are listed on the hd) sectors, heads, and cylinders. They should more or less match the ones in the BIOS.

[odditude]

Thanks for the quick replies. I will install SP2 and see if I can reformat to the max size.

You can't reformat the system drive. You'll either need to use a partition-management utility to resize the partition OR you'll need to slipstream SP2 onto your Windows CD (creating a new CD) and do a clean install from there. For more info on slipstreaming, read this.

Alternatively, you can use nLite to integrate SP2 - this would probably be easier, especially if you don't have the patience for the console and decent CD-burning software.

This may sound like a dumb question, but how do I check what the BIOS recognizes the HDD size as? (Is the size listed somewhere within the BIOS?)

Ehh, this depends on your BIOS. Some show capacity with all of the other drive info, some don't. If yours does, it should be right in the IDE setup on the main page (possibly you might need to dig down one level - in your case, hit enter when you have "Primary Master" selected).

If not, the only way to really tell is if software that SHOULD work doesn't. If the software reads a too-small or just bizarre size, then the BIOS likely isn't reading the drive right.

[darkbenny]

Thabks for the replies.

The BIOS does support large hard drives; I borrowed a legit copy of XP with SP2 already on disk Windows recognizes the actual size of the HD.

However, my old product code does not work with this newer XP CD, thus I had to use my friend's code.

I would like to avoid doing my old slipstreaming of my XP cd, but I do not want to "pirate" Xp if I can avoid it. Is there any way to bypass validating Windows so my friend's serial doesn't get the once over?

[Deathlike2]

Thabks for the replies.

The BIOS does support large hard drives; I borrowed a legit copy of XP with SP2 already on disk Windows recognizes the actual size of the HD.

However, my old product code does not work with this newer XP CD, thus I had to use my friend's code.

It should work. The only issues that could possibly be a factor is if you're trying to use a XP Home key on a XP Pro CD or vice versa. It's simply not gonna work.

I would like to avoid doing my old slipstreaming of my XP cd, but I do not want to "pirate" Xp if I can avoid it. Is there any way to bypass validating Windows so my friend's serial doesn't get the once over?

Slipstreaming is the way to go these days (I should do one someday). You can easily pre-install much of the drivers which can make life easier and have a nicer setup overall. Any CD with a service pack preapplied is just the base CD with the the patches installed anyhow. Slipstreaming is worth wasting that CD-R. The biggest issue of NOT using slipstreaming is that the original CD will fail to partition hds > 137GB and such stuff.. and pretty much shoot yourself in the foot (like, if you wanted to migrate to SATA, the original XP cd would not do you any favors).

[darkbenny]

Hey fellas, thanks for all the suggestions. You guys rule.


I am currently making a slip-stream CD to use in the future; for now I just called MS and got a new key as I was in a rush and wanted to use the PC now:D

you guys will have saved me a lot of time next time something needs to be reformatted

[odditude]

However, my old product code does not work with this newer XP CD, thus I had to use my friend's code.

More than likely, the reason it didn't work is because he has a different version of Windows than you. By version, I mean retail/upgrade/OEM/volume, not Home/Pro. Generally speaking, a product key doesn't care what service pack level is on the CD.

For example, I have a retail copy of XP Pro with SP1. I slipstreamed myself a CD with SP2, and the same product key works just fine.

However, if I were to borrow my dad's OEM copy of XP Pro, my product key won't work.

As a matter of fact, during Windows Setup, the graphic that indicates where to locate the product key is different between retail, upgrade, OEM, and volume. Retail and upgrade copies show you the yellow label that's on the product folder, while OEM shows you a label similar to the CoA attached to a PC with preloaded Windows.

[darkbenny]

However, my old product code does not work with this newer XP CD, thus I had to use my friend's code.

More than likely, the reason it didn't work is because he has a different version of Windows than you. By version, I mean retail/upgrade/OEM/volume, not Home/Pro. Generally speaking, a product key doesn't care what service pack level is on the CD.

You are correct.