strange hard drive problem *happy to say problem now fixed*

[Layer01]

ok just came back form the pc fair and now have my mame computer up and running, BUT!!! one thing is bothering me, i got a 200gig seagate HDD and whne i started the whole formatting thing it onlt came up as 139-ish gig  and now that its formatted and windows is running it says it only has 127gig (fair enough i know windows gives its self a fair bit of room so that doesnt bother me) its just that it seems to be missing a lot of the 200gig's i paid for. now i know HDDs are like that  , they say one size but in effect are another but this seems like a  big difference to me 
so is this normal (see the biggest drive i've ever owned has been 80gig, and that was in fact 75 gig)


EDIT:
Problem solved *yay* 

[Bones]

Are you running XP?

[Layer01]

yep, xp the works.... i did a little research ala google, and  seems i'm not alone in my woes, so know at least i have  a few things to try out, suposedly i'm to type diskmgmt.msc and see if it sees all 200gig, if it does yay, if not, dun dun dun....

[Silver]

Assuming you are using the IDE port on your motherboard, it could well be that this only supports drives up to 140gig (approx). You would probably need either a new motherboard or a IDE pci controller (cheaper) to access the full 200gig, if this is the case.

Most modern motherboards do not have this issue.

Also, type in the model of your HD in google to make sure that it is a 200gig drive.

[Goz]

What motherboard are you using? Earlier mobo's had limitations on size that it could recognize. If memmory serves it was somewhere around 133GB. This plus the dreaded 1024 vs 1000 MB = 1GB misnomer could cause some confusion.

-Goz

[rdagger]

You should try formatting the drive with Seagate DiscWizard:
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/utils.html

[krick]

The limit is 128 *true* gigabytes.

This is equal to approximately 137 *advertising* gigabytes.

This limit is imposed by the ATA LBA32 addressing scheme.

To get past this limit, you need both hardware and software capable of addressing using LBA48.

This is why most large retail drives shipped with their own IDE interface cards when they first came out.

More info available here...

http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/hard_drive_size_barriers.htm

[Layer01]

whoa! is there anything you guys dont know lol 

well my mobo is fairly new i assume since its socket 754 (running AMD athlon 64 2800+) it has PCI slots so i would assume it would be fairly new...
but maybe it is this IDE thing... as this is the first time i've built a Pc from scratch so it is possible i screwed up somwhere there....see i have two IDE slots on the mobo and i atm have IDE 1 running to the DVD rom set to slave, and IDE 2 on the HDD which i am not sure but i have  a feeling its also set to slave, well i left it on whatever it was on when i opened it ( bad text art here --->  I {I} III  i think this was what it was on and seeing as it had 4 pins not 3 i left it  in case i busted it or somthing.)

i've tried Partition magic and that diskmgmt.msc and both showed it at 130 gig max size 127 actually available to the OS.
the mobo is a ASUS K8V-X
the HDD is  a SeaGate Baracuda 200gig HDD model num: ST3200822A (though it might have been 8T320022A couldnt quite see if it was  aS or an 8 but i think it was an S)

in the mean time i will check out ythose links

EDIT: dont know if this makes any diff, i would not think it would but i ahve not yet bothered to add SP2

[crashwg]

My buddies wife just got a 200gb HD not too long ago and had the same problem.  She contacted the guy who sold it to her, who is a computer repair guy, and he told her that she needed to upgrade to service pack 2...

Unfortunatly for her she is unable to do that because she's running Windows XP Pirate Edition.

Anyways, hope that helps.  Don't take my word for it either, remember I'm the third person in this game of Telephone!

[Goz]

Some drives such as Toshiba's / IBM's have a bank of jumpers that determine the size of the drive.

-Goz

[Layer01]

uugh after reading a fair few forums i think i now know what i have to do, or at least have a good idea of what i have to do.
i think these are my options
-take out the HDD, put it into another PC with sp1 and format it format it there using the various tools.
-replace my win xp "ultra edition"  with my win xp home edition and upgrade it to sp1 and try to do it from there, but i suspect it will only see it as 127 gig as its formated like that from the bios.
-get a smaller drive (like 10gig) with only OS stuff on it, and format the big one then...
-or probably the best/easiest solution, take it into a PC repair shop and ask them if they know any easy ways to fix it, with a bit of luck they will be able to do all the hard work for me hehehehe 


so unless its some mobo thing which i doubt, then i will have to do some drive jugeling and try to format it some way, or let the shop guys do that for me and save me the bother of taring my other PC's apart...

[Harry Potter]

Try this:
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/utils.html

Then download the Reg48bitLBA for Windows XP SP1 and Windows 2000 SP3 thingy.

Hope that helps.

[RayB]

I just installed a 160 gig Seagate drive. I did what seemed most sensible... I USED SEAGATE'S SOFTWARE!

Download DiscWizard. One of the steps it does is it detects whether your system is set up to handle larger than 139gb or not. If not, it makes the required registry changes for you (no need for switching computers or downloading special patches or anything like that). I have XP Pro, and also tested the drive in XP Home.

~Ray B.

[elpresidente]

A bios flash may work too. This is on Asus' site:

http://www.asus.com/support/download/item.aspx?ModelName=K8V-X&Type=All&SLanguage=en-us

You could try the latest bios release there.

Make sure you read the instructions on how to flasht he bios:

http://www.asus.com/support/english/techref/bios/intro.aspx

[Layer01]

I just installed a 160 gig Seagate drive. I did what seemed most sensible... I USED SEAGATE'S SOFTWARE!

Download DiscWizard. One of the steps it does is it detects whether your system is set up to handle larger than 139gb or not. If not, it makes the required registry changes for you (no need for switching computers or downloading special patches or anything like that). I have XP Pro, and also tested the drive in XP Home.

~Ray B.

unfortunatly i can not use the diskwizard yet as the 200 gig hdd is my only drive and it would not let me reformat the same drive as you boot drive, which makes sense really 
i will look into the bios though, although most likely i'll just get a tiny 10gig hdd for windows and then format the 200gig from that.
i'd rather keep the 200gig free of windows madness anyhow so it'll be a good thing in the long run.

[Jollyrob1]

You all are waayyy overcomplicating this:

You need to A)

[krick]

There is no such thing as ATA166.  At least not in any currently available products.
The highest is currently ATA150, that is a Serial ATA specification.

You are correct about creating multiple partitions less than 137GB.  That will work.  However, you will most likely need to use the software provided by the drive manufacturer to create the partitions.

To see the whole drive as one partition, it all comes down to LBA48 support. 

Here's the Microsoft page describing large disk support in Windows 2000...
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305098/EN-US/

Here's the Microsoft page about Windows XP...
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;303013

[Layer01]

You all are waayyy overcomplicating this:

You need to A)  Buy a more recent mobo with ATA166 support
                    B)  Buy an ATA166 IDE controller card
                    C)  Install sp2 for Windows XP (which is what I did)
                    D)  Create more partitions, each less than 137 Gigs


You'll get darn close to the full 200gb, don't worry, the big bad hardware business is not trying to rip you off on your storage, for me, it's something like 192 gigs rougly, not sure off hand, on my laptop at present

PS: I think it's 166...   

thats not really an option as i just bought my mobo, and am not about to go back out and spend another "whatever it costs" just for a new mobo on the off chance that it fixes my problem.

i will instead read through the xp article link from kirck and then most likely use seagate diskwizard on the drive from a smaller drive (10-20gig) which will run win xp home sp2 and then will upgrade itself after all that is done to xp *cough* pro
and hopefully that will solve all this mess 

[XtraSmiley]

It seems the easy thing to do is reformat and kick in the partition.  If you need a way to upgrade to SP2, shoot me a PM.

[lucindrea]

does the mb even see 200mb on the HD? if it only sees 137 , then everything else will be just a hack , if it only sees 137 , odds are you can flash the bios to fix that , then what you need is either xp with sp2 cdr , OR look here http://www.theeldergeek.com/slipstreamed_xpsp2_cd.htm and create your own xp with sp2 on it.

[Layer01]

yeah the mobo only saw it as being ~137 gig, i would try flashing the bios but when i goto the link with the guide on how to do it (http://www.asus.com/support/english/techref/bios/intro.aspx)
it has a few options for which manual to look at, with links like this one :
# Motherboard - AFLASH BIOS Update Procedure (For A7A, A7M, A7S, A7V, P2, P3, P4B, P4S, P5(socket 7), TU, TX97 Series)

and i have no idea what all this A7A, A7M, AFLASH stuff is all about and just dont want to screw it all up by choosing the wrong bios tute 

[pointdablame]

are you formatting hte hdd with Fat or NTFS?

[Layer01]

NTFS

and does anyone know how i can find out which mobo version i should use ? in regards to the flashing the bios tutes over at
http://www.asus.com/support/english/techref/bios/intro.aspx

here is the new bios page if that helps

http://www.asus.com/support/download/item.aspx?ModelName=K8V-X&Type=All&SLanguage=en-us

[krick]

When you say that the "the mobo only saw it as being ~137 gig", what do you mean?
Where did you see the size listed?

[ErikRuud]

I recently installed a 200Gig Western Digital drive.  I could not get pas t the 133Gig limit until I downloded and ran WD's equivalent to DiscWizard.  I strongly reccomend that you use the SeaGate DiscWizard.

Burn it to a CD and then boot your PC from you windows install disc so that you are not trying to reformat the boot disc.

[RayB]

Just so you know, I think DiscWizard applies the >137 fix before it does anything else. So it shouldn't matter that that is the only drive in there... Apply the fix, then you should be able to create a 2nd partition in the unused area of the disc.

ALSO, Seagate has a DOS Floppy version of Discwizard. You could use that.

http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/drivers/discwiz.html

[Layer01]

When you say that the "the mobo only saw it as being ~137 gig", what do you mean?
Where did you see the size listed?

as in when i first started up the pc, and it was finding the hard drives available it found a ~137gig HDD i say "~" because the number was written out in megs or something so the number was something like 139756 but i cant be sure of that as its only from memory.

as for using disk wizard i will do so in about 1-2 days as i have just bought a 10gig HDD of ebay to run my OS so there will no longer be any problems with it being formatted, even if i could get arround it being formatted i will be doing so now any way to get rid of xp on it.

so thanks for your help, the only other thing i am lost on is the mobo bios flashing thing. still dont know how i can tell which tute i should be reading...
anyway i'll let you all know if disk wizard worked for me soon 

[krick]

the only other thing i am lost on is the mobo bios flashing thing. still dont know how i can tell which tute i should be reading...

The latest BIOS for the K8V-X is version 1006.

According to the ASUS website, your motherboard features "ASUS EZ Flash".

Hit Alt-F2 to enter the EZ Flash menu and find out what BIOS version you currently have.

If it's older than 1006, you can download the 1006 BIOS, put it on a floppy disk and follow the instructions on this web page...

http://www.asus.com/products/mb/ezflash.htm