windows 2000 (SP4) installation to an SATA drive: can only see 132GB ...

[sun4384]

(I am aware of the 48bit limitation and EnableBigLba registry thing.)

I have a new 500GB SATA drive which I want to fresh-install win2k. Before starting, I partitioned it into a 10GB active partition and another primary partition for the rest on a machine with Win2k + SP4 + EnableBigLba. Both were formated as NTFS.

Then, I booted from a SP4-slipstreamed Win2k installation CD, but windows detected the 500GB hdd as a 132GB one. I tried to hook another 250GB SATA drive, but again it was detected as a 132GB one. In the BIOS, the whole capacity was detected. As long as I understand, a SP4-slipstreamed Win2k CD should be able to detect the whole capacity...

Anyway, at least the two partitions were detected, and I chose the first partition for the windows installation. After the installation, it didn't boot.... and more importantly, the partition table was corrupted and could not see the data in both partition.

It's weird... Here are my questions.
1. Can SP4-slipstreamed Win2k installation CD detect drives larger than 132GB at the time of installation? Is anything different with SATA drives?
2. If a drive was pre-partitioned on a machine with Win2k + SP4 + EnableBigLba, is there no chance to install windows on one of the pre-partitioned partition?


I have 400GB of data on the second partition of the drive, so wiping out the drive and starting over is not an option for me.......... Help...........

 

[bruceb]

Since you partitioned the drive, you will need to go into disk management to make the
additional partions active. You may also want to resize them after everything is up
and running. To be on the safe side, you should copy your data over to another drive
just in case something goes wrong.

 

[sun4384]

Yes, the partition I plan to install win2k is set active. Somehow the win2k+sp4 is limited to 132GB recognizing the disk.
After ignoring that limitation and installing windows to the pre-partitioned active partition, the partition table is corrupted (messed up) and the disk geometry changes.
I had to fix the geometry and the partition table to get the data on the other partition back. I'm not making any progress here...

Probably if I wipe out all the partitions and start from scratch (creating partitions at the time of installation), I think it will be fine. But there is no space to back up 400GB of data...
One last hope I have is to create a new active partition of the same size to another disk, to install windows there, and to perform partition to partition copy. I'll try that.

 

[sun4384]

The last hope described above finally worked.
I use ghost to copy partitions, and the -FDSP or -FDSZ switch should be used to make it work.

 

[alcalde]

Do you have any information on how you set the geometry and partition table back? I encountered a similar problem with Windows XP yesterday. I wanted to test whether certain updates were causing a tuner card problem, so I decided to install another copy of XP to the second hard drive in the system (both SATA). Windows XP install saw the drives as 132GB vs. 200GB. It saw the partition I created for the install OK, so I selected it, and XP install decided on its own that it would be a good idea to do some type of quick format to the FIRST drive on the system, lose the partitions and scramble the geometry settings! I guess the thinking was, "Oh, you want to install on drive 2? Then I guess you don't need drive 1 anymore. Here, let me take care of that for you." :-(

I haven't touched the drive since this happened yesterday. I've got an old 20GB drive in the machine now with Windows XP installed on it so I could check things out and try some demos of disk recovery software. It seems though that the altered geometry settings are hindering their ability to recover most of the data. Again, if you or anyone else could give me a clue as to what I need to do to put things back the way they should be, I would be grateful. Some important things are backed up, but my copies of most everything else date back to 11/05. I'd really like not to lose more than a year's worth of data. I've also learned a lesson about backing up MBRs and partition tables.