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HD over 137 GB

P

philo

Flightless Bird
I do a lot of work on older machines.

I've found that if I need to add a larger 2nd drive to a machine that
has a 137 Gig Bios limit...
all I need to do is *disable* that drive in the bios and let the
operating system detect the drive.

I've been doing that for years and have never had the slightest problem.


Well, now I've worked on a machine where I am simply replacing two
smaller drives with one larger one the ...and I used a 160gig
drive...but the bios only detected it as 137gigs (and no, there is no
bios update )

I went to install XP-sp3 and the installer recognized the entire drive.

XP installed and works fine


I'll be darned
 
M

mscir

Flightless Bird
On 09/05/2010 04:19 AM, philo wrote:
> I do a lot of work on older machines.
> I've found that if I need to add a larger 2nd drive to a machine that
> has a 137 Gig Bios limit...
> all I need to do is *disable* that drive in the bios and let the
> operating system detect the drive.
> I've been doing that for years and have never had the slightest problem.
> Well, now I've worked on a machine where I am simply replacing two
> smaller drives with one larger one the ...and I used a 160gig
> drive...but the bios only detected it as 137gigs (and no, there is no
> bios update )
> I went to install XP-sp3 and the installer recognized the entire drive.
> XP installed and works fine
> I'll be darned


I work on older machines sometimes, I'll definitely remember this, thanks!
 
P

Pegasus [MVP]

Flightless Bird
"philo" <philo@privacy.net> wrote in message
news:gemdnU7QjMg14R7RnZ2dnUVZ_hudnZ2d@ntd.net...
> I do a lot of work on older machines.
>
> I've found that if I need to add a larger 2nd drive to a machine that has
> a 137 Gig Bios limit...
> all I need to do is *disable* that drive in the bios and let the operating
> system detect the drive.
>
> I've been doing that for years and have never had the slightest problem.
>
>
> Well, now I've worked on a machine where I am simply replacing two smaller
> drives with one larger one the ...and I used a 160gig drive...but the bios
> only detected it as 137gigs (and no, there is no bios update )
>
> I went to install XP-sp3 and the installer recognized the entire drive.
>
> XP installed and works fine
>
>
> I'll be darned


Many drives can be jumpered to run at full or reduced capacity. It is also
possible that your BIOS is too old to recognise large disks.
 
8

8os.8@invalid.nomail

Flightless Bird
05 Sep 2010,philo <philo@privacy.net> in
news:gemdnU7QjMg14R7RnZ2dnUVZ_hudnZ2d@ntd.net:

>
> I've found that if I need to add a larger 2nd drive to a machine
> that has a 137 Gig Bios limit...
> all I need to do is *disable* that drive in the bios and let the
> operating system detect the drive.
>


freaky. i guess it's critical that the 1st drive boots the pc, and its size is within bios's
gb limit.

i wonder if there will be occasional "burps". maybe for some functions, xp will look at
the bios.
 
8

8os.8@invalid.nomail

Flightless Bird
05 Sep 2010,philo <philo@privacy.net> in
news:gemdnU7QjMg14R7RnZ2dnUVZ_hudnZ2d@ntd.net:

> .and I used a 160gig
> drive...but the bios only detected it as 137gigs (and no, there
> is no bios update )
>
> I went to install XP-sp3 and the installer recognized the entire
> drive.


oops my recent reply, i didn't digest the flow of your post well...
this is even freakier.
and yuo haven't partitioned the 160gb?
 
P

Pegasus [MVP]

Flightless Bird
"philo" <philo@privacy.net> wrote in message
news:gemdnU7QjMg14R7RnZ2dnUVZ_hudnZ2d@ntd.net...
> I do a lot of work on older machines.
>
> I've found that if I need to add a larger 2nd drive to a machine that has
> a 137 Gig Bios limit...
> all I need to do is *disable* that drive in the bios and let the operating
> system detect the drive.
>
> I've been doing that for years and have never had the slightest problem.
>
>
> Well, now I've worked on a machine where I am simply replacing two smaller
> drives with one larger one the ...and I used a 160gig drive...but the bios
> only detected it as 137gigs (and no, there is no bios update )
>
> I went to install XP-sp3 and the installer recognized the entire drive.
>
> XP installed and works fine
>
>
> I'll be darned
>


I recall reading somewhere that the BIOS only matters for the boot process.
Once Windows XP takes over, it will work out by itself what disk you have.
 
P

philo

Flightless Bird
"Pegasus [MVP]" <news@microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:et4CVbQTLHA.5956@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
>
>
> "philo" <philo@privacy.net> wrote in message
> news:gemdnU7QjMg14R7RnZ2dnUVZ_hudnZ2d@ntd.net...
>> I do a lot of work on older machines.
>>
>> I've found that if I need to add a larger 2nd drive to a machine that has
>> a 137 Gig Bios limit...
>> all I need to do is *disable* that drive in the bios and let the
>> operating system detect the drive.
>>
>> I've been doing that for years and have never had the slightest problem.
>>
>>
>> Well, now I've worked on a machine where I am simply replacing two
>> smaller drives with one larger one the ...and I used a 160gig drive...but
>> the bios only detected it as 137gigs (and no, there is no bios update )
>>
>> I went to install XP-sp3 and the installer recognized the entire drive.
>>
>> XP installed and works fine
>>
>>
>> I'll be darned
>>

>
> I recall reading somewhere that the BIOS only matters for the boot
> process. Once Windows XP takes over, it will work out by itself what disk
> you have.



Well back in the old days...

IE : when I used a P-1...
when I put in a 20 gig drive...
the bios saw it as six gigs and that was that. Fdisk also saw it as 6
gigs( At least as far as win98 could handle it.)
However I do recall that if I partitioned and formatted the drive on a
machine whose bios could handle a (huge) 20 gig drive,
then I could put it back in the older machine and load win98 on it and all
was ok.

Norton utilites saw the drive as mis-configured...
but no windows utilites had any problems.

So with XP_sp3 at least...
I think as long as the bios can detect a drive at all...
the exact configuration (as seen by the bios) is apparantly not that
important.
 
C

Cheng Heng

Flightless Bird
If you do a lot of work on older machines then you should have
known that all HD manufacturers have a tool to enable larger
disks.

One such example is here:

<http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=Maxtor_Big_Drive_Enabler&vgnextoid=535d8b9c4a8ff010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD>

Why take risks with customers data when you can blame larger
companies for c0ck-ups!

hth

philo wrote:
>
> I do a lot of work on older machines.
>
> I've found that if I need to add a larger 2nd drive to a machine that
> has a 137 Gig Bios limit...
> all I need to do is *disable* that drive in the bios and let the
> operating system detect the drive.
>
> I've been doing that for years and have never had the slightest problem.
>
> Well, now I've worked on a machine where I am simply replacing two
> smaller drives with one larger one the ...and I used a 160gig
> drive...but the bios only detected it as 137gigs (and no, there is no
> bios update )
>
> I went to install XP-sp3 and the installer recognized the entire drive.
>
> XP installed and works fine
>
> I'll be darned
 
P

philo

Flightless Bird
On 09/05/2010 02:57 PM, Cheng Heng wrote:
> If you do a lot of work on older machines then you should have
> known that all HD manufacturers have a tool to enable larger
> disks.
>
> One such example is here:
>
> <http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=Maxtor_Big_Drive_Enabler&vgnextoid=535d8b9c4a8ff010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD>
>
> Why take risks with customers data when you can blame larger
> companies for c0ck-ups!
>
> hth
>
> philo wrote:
>>
>> I do a lot of work on older machines.
>>
>> I've found that if I need to add a larger 2nd drive to a machine that
>> has a 137 Gig Bios limit...
>> all I need to do is *disable* that drive in the bios and let the
>> operating system detect the drive.
>>
>> I've been doing that for years and have never had the slightest problem.
>>
>> Well, now I've worked on a machine where I am simply replacing two
>> smaller drives with one larger one the ...and I used a 160gig
>> drive...but the bios only detected it as 137gigs (and no, there is no
>> bios update )
>>
>> I went to install XP-sp3 and the installer recognized the entire drive.
>>
>> XP installed and works fine
>>
>> I'll be darned




XP_sp3 has no problems with drives larger than 137G

I was referring to the bios and it's lack of support for drives of that
size.
 
A

Andy

Flightless Bird
Until Windows starts running, disk access is performed via the bios,
so as long as the bios does not have to access past the 137GB point on
the drive during the boot process, there won't be any problem. Since
the NTFS backup MFT is at the midpoint of the partition, a 250GB drive
with a single partition will work. A 300GB drive won't work.

On Sun, 05 Sep 2010 06:19:03 -0500, philo <philo@privacy.net> wrote:

>I do a lot of work on older machines.
>
>I've found that if I need to add a larger 2nd drive to a machine that
>has a 137 Gig Bios limit...
>all I need to do is *disable* that drive in the bios and let the
>operating system detect the drive.
>
>I've been doing that for years and have never had the slightest problem.
>
>
>Well, now I've worked on a machine where I am simply replacing two
>smaller drives with one larger one the ...and I used a 160gig
>drive...but the bios only detected it as 137gigs (and no, there is no
>bios update )
>
>I went to install XP-sp3 and the installer recognized the entire drive.
>
>XP installed and works fine
>
>
>I'll be darned
>
>
>
 
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