Best solution for fixing the 137Gb HD limit?
Simon Liddle
googled on this and realise it is a limitation of my PCs current set-up.
I am going to attempt a BIOS upgrade this evening to see if this will have
any effect, but failing that, I am looking at buying a PCI ATA/133 card,
which should support the larger drive.
My question is, if I do this, will the PC recognise it as my primary IDE
controller, and if not, is there a way to make it do so?
At the moment I have the 200Gb drive as the primary and a 40Gb drive as the
slave on my first IDE controller, and a DVD drive as the primary and a CD-R
drive as the slave on my second controller.
I want to keep the 200Gb as the main primary drive which will contain my OS.
Does this sound feasible? Is there anything obvious I am missing?
If I cannot get the additional controller to act as the first one, will this
mean booting off the 200Gb drive through the additional controller is a
no-go?
The other option is to install an overlay if one is available. To me, this
doesn't sound as reliable/safe/sensible as a hardware option. What is the
general consensus on using an overlay? Should I avoid it if possible?
(After all, the PCI card I am looking at, the Maxtor Ultra ATA/133, is
fairly cheap.)
(I think I may have some of the terminology wrong here, but hopefully you'll
get the idea!)
Thanks in advance,
Simon
--
Simon Liddle
The email address in the header is no longer used.
Please address replies to this newsgroup.
Rod Speed
Simon Liddle <simon_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:BACC5DFF.208F6%simon_...@hotmail.com...
> I have a 200Gb drive, but my PC is only recognising 137Gb of it. I have
> googled on this and realise it is a limitation of my PCs current set-up.
> I am going to attempt a BIOS upgrade this evening to see if
> this will have any effect, but failing that, I am looking at buying
> a PCI ATA/133 card, which should support the larger drive.
> My question is, if I do this, will the PC
> recognise it as my primary IDE controller,
You can certainly have your OS boot drive on that new card.
Quite a few of those large drives are sold with the card for
just that reason, easier for the user than having to chase up
and flash the motherboard bios if they dont know much.
> and if not, is there a way to make it do so?
> At the moment I have the 200Gb drive as the primary and a 40Gb
> drive as the slave on my first IDE controller, and a DVD drive as
> the primary and a CD-R drive as the slave on my second controller.
> I want to keep the 200Gb as the main primary drive which will contain my OS.
> Does this sound feasible?
Yes.
> Is there anything obvious I am missing?
Nope.
> If I cannot get the additional controller to act as
> the first one, will this mean booting off the 200Gb
> drive through the additional controller is a no-go?
Nope, most relatively modern motherboards can
boot off any drive they can see at boot time.
> The other option is to install an overlay if one is available.
Yes, but its the least desirable of the 3 main alternatives.
Gets a bit messy reconfiguring drives later at times.
> To me, this doesn't sound as reliable/
> safe/sensible as a hardware option.
Its only marginally less safe. The main risk arises when reconfiguring
the system drives wise later and situations like that.
> What is the general consensus on using an overlay?
That its the least desirable of those main 3 alternatives.
> Should I avoid it if possible?
Yes.
> (After all, the PCI card I am looking at, the
> Maxtor Ultra ATA/133, is fairly cheap.)
Yep.
> (I think I may have some of the terminology wrong here,
Nope.
> but hopefully you'll get the idea!)
Yep, its a pretty common situation currently.
Eric Gisin
Microsoft registry hack for Win 2K/XP?
"Simon Liddle" <simon_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:BACC5DFF.208F6%simon_...@hotmail.com...
Simon Liddle
> The OS has to reside in the first 137GB (or 8GB for olderOS). Did you the
> Microsoft registry hack for Win 2K/XP?
No, I didn't know there was one....
Would you have a reference to hand? If not, I'll google for it, now that I
know what I'm looking for, and see what I can find.
(Just in case; is this method reliable? Are there any risks in terms of
data-loss on the HD beyond 137Gb that I need to be weary of?)
Thanks,
Simon Liddle
<snip>
>
> You can certainly have your OS boot drive on that new card.
> Quite a few of those large drives are sold with the card for
> just that reason, easier for the user than having to chase up
> and flash the motherboard bios if they dont know much.
>
<snip>
Okay, thanks for the reassurance and clarification Rod! :)
Regards,
Folkert Rienstra
"Simon Liddle" <simon_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:BACC5DFF.208F6%simon_...@hotmail.com...
> googled on this and realise it is a limitation of my PCs current set-up.
>
> I am going to attempt a BIOS upgrade this evening to see if this will have
> any effect, but failing that, I am looking at buying a PCI ATA/133 card,
> which should support the larger drive.
>
> My question is, if I do this, will the PC recognise it as my primary IDE
> controller,
Nope and there is no reason that it should either.
Any sensible PC that recognizes up to 137GB will have provisions for that.
> and if not, is there a way to make it do so?
If necessary you can just disable the bios for any
bootable drive that remains on the inbuilt controllers.
>
> At the moment I have the 200Gb drive as the primary and a 40Gb drive as the
> slave on my first IDE controller, and a DVD drive as the primary and a CD-R
> drive as the slave on my second controller.
>
> I want to keep the 200Gb as the main primary drive which will contain my OS.
>
> Does this sound feasible? Is there anything obvious I am missing?
>
> If I cannot get the additional controller to act as the first one, will this
> mean booting off the 200Gb drive through the additional controller is a
> no-go?
Nope.
>
> The other option is to install an overlay if one is available.
> To me, this doesn't sound as reliable/safe/sensible as a hardware option.
Why not?
> What is the
> general consensus on using an overlay? Should I avoid it if possible?
It's fine, provided one is available, haven't heard of one yet. However,
if you are using one of those horribly overpriced (re)partitioners
there could be a problem using them when the install software uses an
overlay specific partition type unknown to the partitioning software.
> (After all, the PCI card I am looking at, the Maxtor Ultra ATA/133, is
> fairly cheap.)
They won't be for free.
Joep
> > The email address in the header is no longer used.
> > Please address replies to this newsgroup.
Why put it in the header then?
--
Joep
"Folkert Rienstra" <see_Re...@myweb.nl> wrote in message
news:b870eq$720gs$1...@ID-79662.news.dfncis.de...
news
AND your 40GB drive is in good working order, you would be better off
putting the OS on the 40GB drive and booting from it.
Also, if you do install a new controller card for the 200GB drive, keeping
the 40GB drive on the primary motherboard controller makes the configuration
simpler. You may get better performance by attaching only one HDD to each
controller.
If booting from the 200GB drive is a must, selecting a boot device order
that puts 'SCSI' first will normally make the boot device on a controller
card the boot device for the system.
"Simon Liddle" <simon_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:BACC5DFF.208F6%simon_...@hotmail.com...
Rod Speed
news <ne...@covad.net> wrote in message
news:b87rcb$vtq$1...@sun-news.laserlink.net...
> If you want to use your 200GB drive as a single, contiguous space
> for data, AND your 40GB drive is in good working order, you would
> be better off putting the OS on the 40GB drive and booting from it.
Nope, the 40GB drive is unlikely to have
as good performance as the 200GB drive.
> Also, if you do install a new controller card for the
> 200GB drive, keeping the 40GB drive on the primary
> motherboard controller makes the configuration simpler.
Yes.
> You may get better performance by
> attaching only one HDD to each controller.
Or you may cripple the performance of the 200GB drive
considerably by not having it on the motherboard controller.
Andy
can be successfully installed into a partition that encompasses the
entire 200GB capacity by using an upgraded version of the Windows XP
installation CD that has been slipstreamed with Service Pack 1. This
works even if the motherboard BIOS can recognize only 137GB. The
standard XP installation CD recognizes only 137GB even if the BIOS
recognizes the entire disk. A BIOS that recognizes the entire disk
allows you to boot Windows XP that is installed in a partition that
begins past the 137GB boundary.
<http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;[LN];303013>
Simon Liddle
> You don't mention what operating system you're using, but Windows XP
> can be successfully installed into a partition that encompasses the
> entire 200GB capacity by using an upgraded version of the Windows XP
> installation CD that has been slipstreamed with Service Pack 1. This
> works even if the motherboard BIOS can recognize only 137GB. The
> standard XP installation CD recognizes only 137GB even if the BIOS
> recognizes the entire disk. A BIOS that recognizes the entire disk
> allows you to boot Windows XP that is installed in a partition that
> begins past the 137GB boundary.
> <http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;[LN];303013>
Sorry, I should have mentioned, I am using WinXP (Pro, in this case).
Looking at the article, this sounds like what someone else referred to as
the registry hack. I'll give this a try, as my BIOS does recognise the full
drive.
Thanks Andy,
Simon Liddle
>>>
>>> The email address in the header is no longer used.
>>> Please address replies to this newsgroup.
>
> Why put it in the header then?
As opposed to using my current address, or as opposed to making up an
invalid one?
If the former, then I don't use my current address as it'd probably get
spam-harvested.
If the latter, then I feel (i.e., this is just my opinion) that it would be
unfair to use an address that could become (no matter how unlikely) somebody
else's domain in the future. Sure I could stick .invalid or whatever on the
end, but what difference does it make whether I do that or use my current
method?
In fact, with the quantity of spam mail that uses forged headers these days,
if I use an invalid address, and spam is sent to it, it might even end up
getting bounced to some innocent individual.
Eric Gisin
news:0u0favssmt71i2u7o...@4ax.com...
| You don't mention what operating system you're using, but Windows XP
| can be successfully installed into a partition that encompasses the
| entire 200GB capacity by using an upgraded version of the Windows XP
| installation CD that has been slipstreamed with Service Pack 1. This
| works even if the motherboard BIOS can recognize only 137GB. The
| standard XP installation CD recognizes only 137GB even if the BIOS
| recognizes the entire disk. A BIOS that recognizes the entire disk
| allows you to boot Windows XP that is installed in a partition that
| begins past the 137GB boundary.
| <http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;[LN];303013>
The article is better written than the previous one. Now it says if the
registry value is set but the BIOS does not support LBA 48-bit, then Win XP
sees only 137GB. The previous one suggested it would see the whole disk.
Rod Speed
> Joep wrote:
>>>> The email address in the header is no longer used.
>>>> Please address replies to this newsgroup.
>> Why put it in the header then?
> As opposed to using my current address,
> or as opposed to making up an invalid one?
> If the former, then I don't use my current
> address as it'd probably get spam-harvested.
> If the latter, then I feel (i.e., this is just my opinion) that it would
> be unfair to use an address that could become (no matter how
> unlikely) somebody else's domain in the future. Sure I could stick
> .invalid or whatever on the end, but what difference does it make
> whether I do that or use my current method?
Basically a bogus email address would be more obviously bogus
if you choose it correctly and you wouldnt have to say that the
email address isnt valid anymore. Some use email addresses
like bugge...@nospam.com etc.
> In fact, with the quantity of spam mail that uses forged headers
> these days, if I use an invalid address, and spam is sent to it, it
> might even end up getting bounced to some innocent individual.
Sure, thats certainly one advantage of using a valid email
address that you dont ever bother to read. Trouble with that
approach tho is that plenty dont read posts very carefully
and just reply and they just wont get any response.
Simon Liddle
>
> Simon Liddle <simon_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:BACD6EA7.20C7D%simon_...@hotmail.com...
>> Joep wrote:
>
>>>>> The email address in the header is no longer used.
>>>>> Please address replies to this newsgroup.
>
>>> Why put it in the header then?
>
>> As opposed to using my current address,
>> or as opposed to making up an invalid one?
>
>> If the former, then I don't use my current
>> address as it'd probably get spam-harvested.
>
>> If the latter, then I feel (i.e., this is just my opinion) that it would
>> be unfair to use an address that could become (no matter how
>> unlikely) somebody else's domain in the future. Sure I could stick
>> .invalid or whatever on the end, but what difference does it make
>> whether I do that or use my current method?
>
> Basically a bogus email address would be more obviously bogus
> if you choose it correctly and you wouldnt have to say that the
> email address isnt valid anymore. Some use email addresses
> like bugge...@nospam.com etc.
>
Yeah, I agree, that would be more obvious.
>> In fact, with the quantity of spam mail that uses forged headers
>> these days, if I use an invalid address, and spam is sent to it, it
>> might even end up getting bounced to some innocent individual.
>
> Sure, thats certainly one advantage of using a valid email
> address that you dont ever bother to read. Trouble with that
> approach tho is that plenty dont read posts very carefully
> and just reply and they just wont get any response.
>
I realise that. I do actually check the account albeit only once every week
or so, to see if there are any messages intended for me amongst the hoards
of spam. Since adding this footer about 5 months ago (after using this
no-longer-used address in the header of my posts for a couple of years),
I've only had about 3 replies to the address from about 400 newsgroup
postings.
So maybe people are paying more attention than we think. ;)