That really stupid hard drive question...

[Peerzy]

Don't you hate it when people ask it, you know when it only shows up X ammount and should show up Y ammount, bunch of wankers :dry:

Oh, yeah and i've just installed my new 160gb hard drive and i was expecting it to show up as 137gb as they all do then go in Disc Management and partion the rest, however it only shows up as 127gb ( :huh: ) And in Disc management it does not show any un-partioned space. I ordered a 160GB hard drive, and it's got 160gb written on the lil' sticker on the side.

:unsure:

[Virtualbody1234]

Why did you expect 137? A 160 GB shows up as 149.04 GB in my computer.

It looks as if you have hit the barrier: http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/bios/sizeGB128.html

Check to see if there is a BIOS update available for your motherboard that addresses this issue.

[Peerzy]

Isn't it that Win Xp cannot read hard drives bigger than 137gb, so all hard drives bigger than that just partion to 137gb and leave the best alone. So i was expecting to have to partion the rest, but it says its all partioned.

I'll check out that link and might try a format in a DOS program.

EDIT: Looking on WD's website it says:


137GB (128GB binary) Barrier:
On many systems, the IDE/ATA interface uses a 28-bit addressing which cannot
recognize more than 137GB of storage. To overcome this capacity barrier, drives
higher than this capacity have adopted a 48-bit addressing system which can be supported in newer computer systems with updated controller chips, BIOS codes, and operating system
drivers (refer to your system documentation for more details). If your system does not support drives of this size, you have a few options.

Solution :
Western Digital has included a controller card and drivers in many of our retail packaged drives that are greater than 137GB to address this operating system and BIOS limitation. During installation, drives larger than 137GB must be attached to the controller card and the drivers for your operating system must be loaded properly to avoid the risk of data loss. If you need a controller card, please visit our Online Store.

And the store doesn't say where i can download said driver, the drive i brought was OEM so thats why i didn't get the driver cd. Also the driver is not in thier download section on the website :unsure:

2nd EDIT: This is the drive:

Western Digital Caviar SE 160GB UIDE 100 7200rpm 8mb Cache - OEM (http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?rb=5756849491&action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=47654)
http://image.ebuyer.com/UK/P0047654_C0000004_P0000000.jpg

3rd EDIT: Ahhhhhhhhhhh silly me, you need at least Win Xp SP1 or Win 2000 SP3 installed for it to noticed anything bigger than 137gb (128gb binary)


Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1) or Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 (SP3) must be installed for Windows or a registry key must be manually added to Windows' Registry. For information about Windows XP Service Pack 1, see Microsoft Article 322389 or for Windows 2000 Service Pack 3, see Microsoft Article 320853.

Time for an update :crying:

[Virtualbody1234]

You're not even using SP1? Ok.

[Peerzy]

You're not even using SP1? Ok.


Since my hard drives failed a month ago i didn't bother to install SP1 as i was just happy to have a pc up and running for my work.

[zeustke165]

does your motherboard support 48bit addressing? that can also be a source or problems for larger hard drives, and about the size diffence, I think we should start a class action lawsuit so we can get back all the extra advertized space the manufacturers promise, we gotta teach the marketing departments how to use base 2 numbering, a gig is not 1 billion bytes, it is 2^30 bytes. my 400GB HD formats as 371GB I figure I am owed 29GB...

[Peerzy]

I use to have a 160gb & 250gb hard drive on the same motherboard so i knew it wasn't that. Its showing up the extra 30gb now and its partioning. However i think its partioning as a new drive, is there a way i can make it join with my current 128gb hard drive?

[zeustke165]

partition magic can join the two partitions, as can any other good patitioning program...