Getting a 160GB HD to work with Windows XP

[Avalon]

My friend just got himself a new rig, and has a WD 160GB hard drive. I remember reading that Windows XP could only read a little over 120GB, but there was a solution to that problem. I tried searching to find it, but that didn't bring up anything. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Thanks.

 

[gwai lo]

install the service packs

 

[CheesePoofs]

One of the older file systems that windows used to use (fat or fat32) had a limit that was around 120gb. However, as long as you use the NTFS filesystem, you can use that hard drive fine with windows xp.

 

[Avalon]

Does SP1 fix it, or only SP2?

 

[yadda]

How old is his box???

These days I don't think the 137 GB comes into play

 

[Avalon]

He just ordered it last week. It's a Gigabyte K8NS Ultra s939 (or whatever that s939 variant is) with a 3000+ winchester.

He says when he tries to get his Windows cd to boot, it blue screens and tells him something about an unmountable disk volume error. I've never seen that error before, so I wasn't sure how to help him, and I thought maybe it might be because of the HD limitation I thought I had heard existed in Windows XP until you applied a fix. He's trying to do a fresh install.

 

[Baked]

SP1 will do it.

 

[Avalon]

Originally posted by: Baked
SP1 will do it.

Ah, his installation is SP1. I wonder what his problem is, then.

 

[LTC8K6]

FAT32 can handle disks up to 2TB, so that won't be the problem.

XP will not format a drive larger than 32GB in anything but NTFS, though. If you format a larger drive in FAT32 with 3rd party software, XP will work with it okay.

 

[stickybytes]

i have installed win xp sp2 on a 160gb hd with no problems whatsoever.

 

[Avalon]

He just told me he got it working and it stopped blue screening. I have no idea what he did, lol. Thanks for trying to help, everyone. I appreciate it.