Getting a larger Hard Drive Recognized

[kimcrwbr1]

set the bios to boot from cdrom first

 

[AllanD]

Nothing anyone has suggested is going to do spit.

It's a DUAL problem.

First the Bios I have is not capable of dealing with 48bit LBA support.
NOR is the ONE newer bios that is available for this notebook, that kills me on firmware.

But to add another stake through the heart of this issue,
my notebook has the Intel 855 Montara chipset and any chipset 860
or earlier isn't capable of supporting 48bit LBA.
(OR so I'm told by BOTH WD and Intel, and yes, I asked.)

48bit LBA is utterly necissary for any HDD larger than 128Gig.
and my hardware and firmware aren't...

So I'll find a more productive use for the 320gb drive
and spend $55 on a 120gb drive (or $110 on two of them
and another $25 on a drive bay adapter)

Eventually I MAY get a newer laptop that can use the 320gb and if so fantastic...

But frankly I'd really rather get a slightly newer laptop that takes SATA drives
because on laptops with SATA drives the only limitation is physical size of the drives.

For the same money I spent on this PATA 320gb drive I could have gotten a nearly identical WD Laptop drive in sata for the same money.. the difference? it would have been a 640gb drive.

"standard" notebook drives are 2.5" wide and 9.5mm thick.
So far the largest drive made in this form factor is a 750gb.

there is a 1tb notebook drive on the market, Western Digital makes it,
but it's a new physical size, still 2.5" wide but 12.5mm thick.

that and a 16gb SSD that fits in the PCMCIA slot (As an ultimate backup for the OS...)

Oh what "fun" it is catching up on nearly a decade slide behind in technology.

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[kimcrwbr1]

I dont understand if the bios dont recognize the HD how did you install windows and if you dont try booting from the CDROM and formatting the unpartitioned space you wont know. It will only take about 10 minutes to find out and cant hurt anything.

 

[kimcrwbr1]

Or you can probably split it up in several different partitions also tandy for backing up the system and files.

 

[BRUTUS_T_HOG]

looks like you haven't resolved this. i do know that windows xp doesn't allow more then 120GB per drive.. i had the same problem with my 250gb drive.. the problem is all in windows xp and i still have only 120gb cause i never bothered to try.. im thinking the only way for you to do this is to boot with your windows disk into the recovery console.. you'll have to look up the exact code to enter(fdisk? i really don't remember), but it will take you to a hard drive formatting/partitioning utility that you can try to partition the remaining space into a useable format.

you might be able to use that stupid utility that you set windows up with.

but it also looks like your hardware can't even support it

 

[rboyer]

The whole thing with the bios being able to support 48 bit lba is crap, if it's reading the drive correctly then the problem is in the operating system. So says the pentium 133 file server sitting in my home with a 250gb SATA drive that's being ran on an IDE channel with a SATA to PATA adapter dongle. That of course doesn't run windows.

 

[AllanD]

I dont understand if the bios dont recognize the HD how did you install windows and if you dont try booting from the CDROM and formatting the unpartitioned space you wont know. It will only take about 10 minutes to find out and cant hurt anything.

The issue is that the laptop only "Sees what it CAN see"

And with a 20gb system partition it only shows the "unallocated space"
as 108Gb, the laptop will format ALL the unallocated space it can see perfectly.

the additional "missing" 190gb CAN be formatted externally (by connecting the HDD to my desktop computer) but if I do so then the total system volume is a large binary number that the Bios and chipset can't deal with
and at bootup the computer stops, says "Unadressable volume" and goes no further. it WILL NOT BOOT if the total volume exceeds the 128(binary)/137Gb(decimal) hard drive capacity limit.

Or you can probably split it up in several different partitions also tandy for backing up the system and files.

Tried that (Doesn't work) the limit is on the TOTAL volume of ALL partitions on the drive.

looks like you haven't resolved this. i do know that windows xp doesn't allow more then 120GB per drive.. i had the same problem with my 250gb drive.. the problem is all in windows xp and i still have only 120gb cause i never bothered to try.. im thinking the only way for you to do this is to boot with your windows disk into the recovery console.. you'll have to look up the exact code to enter(fdisk? i really don't remember), but it will take you to a hard drive formatting/partitioning utility that you can try to partition the remaining space into a useable format.

you might be able to use that stupid utility that you set windows up with.

but it also looks like your hardware can't even support it

Actually the limit was with the original issue of XP.
SP1 resolved the issue with a newer system32 ATAPI driver.

I'm running a clean, new, authenticated install of SP3.

That's right Intel says the 855 chipset I have cannot support a drive larger than 128/137, so the bios is irrelevant other than as an intellectual issue..

The whole thing with the bios being able to support 48 bit lba is crap, if it's reading the drive correctly then the problem is in the operating system. So says the pentium 133 file server sitting in my home with a 250gb SATA drive that's being ran on an IDE channel with a SATA to PATA adapter dongle. That of course doesn't run windows.

What you are saying doesn't apply.

Because YOUR bios doesn't see a logical drive, it sees an external mass storage controller which has it's OWN bios.

That was how we got around the limitation on my mother's computer,
a P4 2.4 on MoBo with an intel 860 chipset.

Her Motherboard and bios don't support the 320gb drive she's running
but they DO support the Promise IDE controller card which has it's
OWN bios and chipset that DO manage drives that large.

And I'm predicting that you are going to permanantly
Retire that old Pentium 133 you are using for a file server
(and give it a decent burrial)
Because I've got a Dell GX280-SFF sitting here with your name on it...

it's a Second generation "Prescott" P4 2.8Ghz, 1024mb Cache and
800MHz FSB in a mini desktop case.

Hell bring your 250GB HDD down with you and it'll leave here with
an authenticated copy of Win XP-sp3 on it.

the only rub is that you'll need to supply your own USB mouse and Keyboard
(the little bugger has no PS 2 jacks on it, but it's got a total of EIGHT
(Six back two front)USB 2.0's on it.

I owe you and this'll leave you owing me

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