Maxtor 160GB recognized only 131069MB?

[CLiu]

I purchased Maxtor 160GB 7200rpm Ultra series from Compusa following the deals tip in this site. Somehow PartionMagic recognize it as 131069MB so it's more like 145GB drive than 160GB. Someone suggested that my mainboard (ASUS P4B266) may not be able to recognize the size correctly. I have e-mail Asus but I have received responses. There must be some people visiting this site with similar setup as mine (since I got my deal info from this site). Do you have the same problem? If so, how do you get the full capacity of the drive?

BTW, I tried to contact Maxtor but I don't have the model number at hand. If you know the exact number, can you post here? The drive is purchased from Compusa for $99 after rebate if you read the deals section.

Thanks a lot,


cpliu

 

[madthumbs]

Make sure you have the jumper positioned right for master/ slave. This can affect the size it reports as and uses, and maxtor sometimes puts the master/ slave guide upside down (check the key position). I think earlier versions of PM or the file system don't support that large of a HD. The fix would be to use ~120GB partition along with another small one. What does the BIOS/CMOS report the drive as?

 

[CLiu]

I set it as slave. There is one setting that appears to be auto-recognization, but I set it to slave since it would slave. Maybe I will set it to that just to see what happens tonight. BIOS shows up as Maxtor drive but I didn't write down the model name. I will do that tonight.

Thanks for the suggestion,

cpliu

 

[EeyoreX]

A 160GB drive is actually 149.01GB. This is because of the way drives are labeled. Manufacturers use a decimal measurement (where 1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes) while Windows reports the drive using a binary measurement (where 1GB = 1,073,741,824 bytes). Make sure your BIOS is updated as well, though your board should support this drive without a problem.

\Dan

 

[LED]

excerpt=

so it's more like 145GB drive than 160GB.

That's about right on the Windows read!

 

[Peter]

Math. Real Gigabytes versus marketing GB.

One marketing GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes.
One real gigabyte = 1,073,741,824 bytes.

This is why your "160GB" drive actually has only 149.

Why only 131,072 MB aka 128 real gigabytes? Simply because your system BIOS doesn't support the "48-bit LBA" programming model required to go beyond this 128-GByte threshold (which is often falsely referred to as 137-GB. Marketing again.)

 

[AEB]

all hard drives over 137GB come with an adapter card incase your Motherboard cant support the size. these cards allow it to be seen at 160GB compusa has a free install policy you should have let them put the card and HD in

 

[tenoc]

Check the install guide from Maxtor.

Read pages 3 and 25 for explanation and solution.

It's a limitation of your Windows OS and maybe BIOS as well.

 

[bawaji]

Like tenoc suggests, make sure you have Windows XP SP1 or higher, or Windows 2000 SP3 or higher. Otherwise, though your BIOS may recognize the drive as a 149GB drive, Windows will only recognize it as a 137GB drive. Also, load the latest BIOS update for the board. If your motherboard has an ATA 100 IDE controller, it should usually be able to support drives larger than 137GB. Wish the Asus site had more info about the board.

 

[Peter]

Once again the reminder - chipset bugs aside, ANY, yes any, IDE channel on any mainboard can technically do 48-bit LBA as required for these really huge drives. Even the original first generation PIO mode 0 ISA bus IDE cards can do that. This is because on IDE, the actual controller is in the drive - what is usually referred to as the "IDE controller" is just a brainless bus bridge.
However you'll need a fairly new BIOS in your system to actually make it work.