Help with HD involving the 48-bit addressing

[kyo]

I got a 160GB harddrive.. and I'm not sure if my mobo supports the 48 bit addressing thingy that allow you to use HD past the 137GB barrier..
I know that Windows XP service pack 2 supports it but I'd like to find out if my mobo does too..
I have the MSI KT4V mobo with the default bios..

Also.. in case that my mobo doesn't support over 138GB, if I make two partitions (ex 80gb each) will that work?

 

[BFG10K]

The first thing I'd be doing is flashing the mobo's BIOS to the latest version.

 

[DaveSimmons]

When you start up your computer the power-on-self-test text screens should show you what size the motherboard sees the drive as, if it's over 140 GB you are OK.

If your motherboard is missing 48-bit support, you can probably download a BIOS update from the manufacturer website to add it.

 

[OCedHrt]

Also of importance, you will need to enable 48bit addressing in XP otherwise you'll lose data past the 137GB mark. This can be done by setting a registry value. Should be able to easily find this info. And there's no harm in plugging it in even if the mb doesn't support 48 bit addressing.

 

[Dahak]

1) that board will support it fine with out troubles

2) http://support.microsoft.com/d...x?scid=kb;en-us;303013 << is registry settings to turn it on for Win XP SP1 or above
or Maxtor Big Drive Enabler if you dont want to messup in the registry

 

[VirtualLarry]

MAJOR warning here - I've had some recent issues. I have an MSI K4TV-L rev. 1.0 mobo. You may or may not have the same one, they've come out with both a KT4AV and a KT4V-A board, which are different from the original KT4V-L. Anyways. There is a new BIOS out for mine, rev 1.B, with support for the new Socket-A Sempron CPUs mentioned in the readme.

I have a Promise Ultra 100 TX2 PCI IDE controller with three HDs on it, the mobo IDE controllers have four opticals. The first HD is a WD 80GB JB, second is a 160GB JB, third is a 250GB Maxtor DM+9.

To make a long story short, I went from my BIOS 1.7 to 1.B, and lost DOS/BIOS access to my 2nd/3rd HD! Not sure exactly what's going on, but I'm working on it. I suspect that the changes mentioned in the BIOS 1.9 to somehow "fix" network-boot support, is interfering with the Extended Int13h / 48-bit LBA support provided by the Promise BIOS routines, which otherwise work fine with BIOS 1.7. I believe that this issue probably manifests itself with BIOS 1.9 and all newer releases. I would stick with BIOS 1.7 or 1.8 if you are using any kind of add-on PCI IDE controller card. Unfortunately, I could use 1.A or newer, as that mentions a fix for AGP 8x Radeons, which I also have. BIOS 1.B seemed to fixed some strange possibly video-related freeze issues that I've occasionally encountered.

Unknown if this affects HDs attached to the mobo IDE ports, although I'm guessing it probably doesn't.