Large hard drive recognition problem

[homestarmy]

Well, the drive is a 160GB WD. I used it in a HTPC for awhile, and it always gave me jumpy playback of DVD files that were stored on the hard drive. I thought that was strange of course.

Then I take it out, format it, and put it in my main PC as a second drive. I used it for torrents, and I would get strange errors that I had never seen before. For the life of me I just cannot remember what they said, but a google search showed that every person who had it attributed it to their hard drive and fixed it with some type of maintenance or with replacing the drive. I also had some odd windows errors and the chkdsk utility was stoping at a certain point, just bad stuff overall

So I connected my external, made sure any important data was off of it, deleted the partition with Partition Magic 8, created a new partition and then formatted. Now it is only 127GB (it was 149 before I believe). I went back, deleted the partition, and tried to add it through Windows (XP under manage), same thing. When rebooting, my ATA card (Maxtor with a Promise Chipset) is even showing it as a 131xxx size drive.

What can I do to get its space back?

The drive is probably junk anyway with all of the problems that I have had with it.... Is it just me, or has WD become a bit of a pain in the ass?

 

[homestarmy]

One thing that I am thinking could be a possibility is that this card doesn't properly work with drives over the 127 GB (I remember that is significant, but I don't remember why off of the top of my head) limit, therefore it worked like crap when it was a 149GB drive, and now that it has its choice, it won't let it be over that limit. Does that make any sense?

The card shows up under SCSI and RAID controllers in device manager, and it shows up as two items: Promise TEchnology Inc. Ultra IDE Controller and VAX347S SCSI Controller. I did a search on the latter and didn't find anything...

Also, this is the card back in the day that Maxtor sold and boxed with some larger (at the time larger) hard drives, and for some drives they had a $50 rebate to get this item free if you purchased a hard drive (which is how I got it and it has been running wonderfully ever since).

 

[RKS]

I think that 127 GB is an XP SP1 limit. Using SP2 or proprietary HDD utilities usually overcomes this limitation.

 

[homestarmy]

Right, ok. But couldn't something else limit it to that? I'm running SP2.

 

[homestarmy]

Let me also note that I tried to run Western Digital Data Lifeguard Tools and the freakin thing doesn't even load within Windows. It just crashes before anything happens at all. I reinstalled it, same problem.

I believe it can be booted from, but I am running chkdsk on the drive now.

EDIT: chkdsk went through 100% properly.

 

[homestarmy]

EEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeek! Pleeeease help! My chkdsk came out ok, but I don't want to start using the drive until I get the space back!

BTW, In Partition Magic 8, I show 7.8MB at the beginning of the partition that I cannot do anything with... incase that has any relevance. I am also trying to download some torrents to it to see if it still gives me errors. It seems so far that the drive is working properly, but I am missing my extra storage .

 

[birdpup]

Originally posted by: homestarmy
... and the freakin thing ...

Unpleasant word, among a few others in this thread. Please communicate intelligently.

It is possible the diagnostic utilities experience problems with external drives since these drives are relatively new to the market for proper support.

Is it possible to put this drive back into the system as an internal drive? I read through the thread but did not see if this has been attempted. It is again possible the large disk recognition is experiencing difficulty with an external drive.

I would recommend putting this drive back into the system internally, then creating and formatting the partitions, then removing the drive to place it in the external enclosure.

When I experience large drive recognition problems, I usually partition the hard drive with FreeBSD's disk slicer (fdisk utility) since FreeBSD encounters no such problems with drive size. I then format the partition with windows.

It is possible there is a hard drive recognition entry in the bios that can be changed. I believe it needs to be in the LBA mode but I may be incorrect.

Is your SP2 system properly updated?

 

[homestarmy]

I apologize for any unpleasant words, I thought that was ok here (I hang around in the OT forum too much ). As you can see, it has just been a little of a pain, and I have other things going on that have made this relatively simple thing feel worse than it really is.

At some point I must have not spoken correctly to make you believe that it was an external drive. It actually is mounted internally, connecting to a Maxtor ATA controller card.

Now, FreeBSD's disk slicer, is that something that can be run from the windows environment? FreeBSD is another OS in itself, no?

I will definately look into the motherboard settings. But I don't believe they would have an affect, since it would depend on the BIOS of the ATA controller card, wouldn't it? I will look just in case.

And I have all SP2 updates.

Thanks for your help!

 

[helpmeout]

About all I can add is that the 7gb at the beginning of the partition is pretty normal. I just checked my disk management and I evidently succeeded in getting rid of that wasted space after my last format and re-partitioning. I must have a note around somewhere on how I did it. I'll look later and post back.

 

[birdpup]

I am not the best person for large disk recognition issues since other people often understand this situation better than I do.

The FreeBSD installation routine possesses a very generic version of fdisk, which has always provided me with the solution to this problem. The FreeBSD installation cd would be required to access this version of fdisk. I do not know if FreeBSD did anything different from the original fdisk or not, I just know it works. And yes, FreeBSD is an entirely different OS from Windows or even linux.

Since the drive is an internally mounted Maxtor, Maxtor's Big Drive Enabler should solve the problem. However, I am not experienced with hard drive controller cards so I am not sure how this will affect anything.

Please see the provided links below and my signature for more information.

[*]Partition Size Limitation at 32GB, 128Gb

• Ensure jumper is in correct position, if drive is limited to 32GB, the jumper may be positioned backwards.
• Maxtor: Big Drive Enabler
• FreeBSD: Sysinstall
• Microsoft: Windows Support for Large IDE Hard Disks
• Microsoft: 48-Bit LBA Support for ATAPI Disk Drives in Windows 2000

 

[homestarmy]

Originally posted by: helpmeout
About all I can add is that the 7gb at the beginning of the partition is pretty normal. I just checked my disk management and I evidently succeeded in getting rid of that wasted space after my last format and re-partitioning. I must have a note around somewhere on how I did it. I'll look later and post back.

Thanks, please do. Total, I have over 1TB of storage between a number of drives, and I don't believe that I have that on any of my other drives. And of course you mean MB, no?

 

[homestarmy]

Birdpup - I downloaded and attempted to run the Maxtor Utility, it said I didn't need the update, that it was already enabled on my computer. I also read the first windows article, but it doesn't seem to pertain to my situation unfortunately (but thank you very much nonetheless!). The second one seems to speak about editing the registry to do what the Maxtor Utility is supposed to do.

As far as FREE BSD, that just may fix my issue. I don't really know anything about it, and it will probably require some learning on my part to use it to fix my problem. I will have to look into that.

I am thinking at this point that it has to do with the BIOS of my ATA controller card. Is anyone familiar with this type of card? I know a whole lot of them are out there (from all of the free after rebate ones and ones that were included with drives for a long time). Is the BIOS of this card something that would be accessible with settings that I can change?

Thanks for the information so far and any information to come (hopefully)!

 

[birdpup]

The 8MB space at the beginning and, usually, end of the hard drive is normal for most, if not all, hard drives. I believe this space is required to house the necessary filesystem data, such as the inode tables.

For FreeBSD, you can download FreeBSD here, just select the ISO link for your platform, which for most people is i386.
Getting FreeBSD

I am not sure of the usefulness of the bootonly iso since I typically use the installation routine from the disc1 iso. Installation routines for operating systems typically involve setting up the hard drive before copying system files, since you need a place to copy those system files first. Create your partitions, then select W for Write. The routine will warn you this is not the appropriate place to write the partition table but it is the correct place for you since you will not continue installing FreeBSD. Then select Q for Quit and back out of the installation.

You need to remember the option, W for Write, since this option is hidden.

This is how I do it but I am sure there are better Windows techs than I who could provide you with the proper method of regaining your large hard drive.

Maybe you can change your Topic Title and Topic Summary to something more useful for attracting those with controller card knowledge.

Topic Title: Large hard drive recognition problem
Topic Summary: ATA controller card

 

[stevty2889]

In order for the hard drive to be fully recognized, you need SP2 installed(which you do), your motherboard needs to support LBA, and since it's on a controller card, the conrtoller card needs to support LBA.

 

[homestarmy]

Right, so maybe the controller card just doesn't support LBA. Is there any way I can find this out for this card?

Also, if the motherboard doesn't support LBA, it shouldn't matter, because it is on the controller card, no?

 

[FlyingPenguin]

If the mobo doesn't support 48bit LBA you can get around it by installing a 48bit LBA controller. You need to check the manufacturer's specifactions for the card.


REQUIREMENTS FOR SUPPORT OF 48-BIT LBA (EXCEEDING 137GB HDD SIZE LIMIT):
------------------------------------------------------------------------

OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:

Windows 2000 with Service Pack 3 or better or Windows XP with Service Pack 1 or better


HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS:

Your hard drive controller must support 48bit LBA (Large Block Addressing) - check the motherboard manufacturer's website for BIOS update and/or motherboard chipset driver update that MAY add this ability.

Alternately, you can install an add-on 48bit LBA capable controller card.


MOTHERBOARD DRIVER AND BIOS UPDATE:

You may need install the latest motherboard BIOS update.

You may need to install the latest motherboard driver. Intel boards in particular may require the latest "Intel Application Accelerator" driver.

 

[homestarmy]

Ok, so it really is starting to sound like the controller card that is the culprit. This would explain why there were so many screwy problems when it was formatted to 149GB and connected to the controller, because the controller only wanted to support 127GB. Now that it is formatted to 127GB, it couldn't be working better.

I will scour Maxtor's resources to see if there is any info regarding this. I wish one of you guys had this card and could tell me if you've had this issue with it (I know all kinds of AT people got it back in the day).

 

[homestarmy]

I know I should have done more research before, but it looks like I have found the solution to my problem. Maxtor has a bios update for this card to support 48-bit LBA.

But thank you very much everyone, this has been a learning experience. You all helped me trace it back to the ATA card.

 

[homestarmy]

Crap, but the driver I need doesn't seem to want to work. The link is below. Does anyone know another place that I might be able to find this driver?

Link

EDIT: NM, I was able to find another link.

 

[birdpup]

Originally posted by: homestarmy
EDIT: NM, I was able to find another link.

Could you please provide this other link for the controller driver? Thanks.

 

[homestarmy]

There are actually two items, the driver and the bios update. I installed the driver first, in order to be ready for the card with the bios update.

Link to Driver

BIOS Update

Let me know if those links don't work, they should. Hopefully they can help others! I know there are a lot of those cards floating around out there, and they work very well!!

 

[homestarmy]

Just wanted to update that everything worked properly.

Just incase someone else has to do this, these are my tips and what I did.

First, install the driver. It makes no sense to do it after the fact. This way it will be ready for you after you do the bios update.

I printed out the instructions on how to do the update from Maxtor's site and followed them EXACTLY, even if I might have done some things different personally.

I made sure to disconnect my Hard Drives, even though it meant pulling the computer out. Not worth the risk.

After rebooting into Windows, I launched Partition Magic 8, expanded the size of the drive, and POOF! 149GB.

I know these steps are basic, but who knows who might read this in the future.

Thanks again guys!