New 160 gig HD, how do I take care of size barrier?

[EvilYoda]

So it's a WD 160 gig HD, and I don't have a controller card for it, nor do I want to buy one. The app that came with the HD said that there was a registry workaround for it, but the program is crashing every time I try to execute it. Can I utilize the missing space with something like Partition Magic? And is there any easier way to do this?

Totally forgot I would even have this issue, since my largest HD before this was 120 gigs...

Thanks all, please help!

 

[DaiShan]

Are you using REALLY old hardware or windows 98? 2K and XP support larger drives natively iirc, it might just be marketing as in 160billion bytes instead of 160gigabytes. Post your set up.

 

[EvilYoda]

No, it's all new...BioStar M7NGC (mATX nForce 2 board), AMD XP 2600+, 512 DDR400 RAM, and the HD is a Western Digital 160 gig. SP1 supports it, but you have to play around with the registry to get it to work, ASSUMING the BIOS supports 48-bit LBA, which I don't know if mine does or not. OY.

 

[n0cmonkey]

I thought all you had to do was install sp1 and it worked. I've seen the registry setting in GH forum though...

 

[n0cmonkey]

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;303013

 

[23skidoo]

What are you using to partition and format the drive? I just use a WinXP boot disk to Fdisk, partition and Format and don't bother worrying about the "size" of the disk reported in the partitioning; I've got a 160G running as one large partition of the correct size and another one split into three partitions. If you want multiple partitions then once Fdisk is done with the initial disk scan and reports a "size" (incorrectly) and asks you what size you want the partition to be in MB, you can also partition it as a percentage of the total size reported. While Fdisk won't report the correct disk size in MB, it will partition the entire disk as a percentage, or split it into smaller partitons by percentage. So, if you wanted a 40G primary partition you would use a 25% figure for the primary, then create and extended partition and split that into the desired partition size, again by percentages rather than megabytes. Why screw around with the Registry when you don't have to?

 

[EvilYoda]

I might do that, for simplicity's sake. I'd rather have one large partition, but it'd be simple to just part it into 120 and 40. hmph.

 

[EvilYoda]

As for the MS suggestion...I have that already, but I don't know if my BIOS supports it or not and the damn utility at 48bitLBA.com doesn't turn anything up!!?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Plus the drive into your system and check the BIOS to see how it reports it.