WD 200GB Hdd

o0RaidR0o

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Unbeknowest until just recently, it never crossed my mind about any reading limitations of large capacity hdds. Apparently regardless of OS or BIOS, currently anything larger then 137GB's requires an IDE Raid/SCSI card.

Step in WD's 200gb hdd. Has anyone here been able to install and actually read all of wd's 200gb capacity(minus of course the few gigs you would normally lose under windows)?

Here's a problem that I actually looked at on a friends pc, we installed a promise tx2 raid card(which came with the hdd), its drivers, wd's drivers without a hitch. There were no device manager errors or system errors of any sort. However XP can only access 137gigs of the hdd. We tried all kinds of different configurations and even talked to wd's tech support too no avail. We also visted WD's site and flashed the promise card and still nothing.

If we ran the card directly off the mobo the volume information would indicate that there was approximately 50gigs of unallocated space, but when we checked the volume info when attached off the raid card there was no un-allocated space.

If anyone could shed any light on this issue it would greatly be appreciated.

Is it just a wd issue or are other hdd manufacturers selling 200gb hdd's just as flaky? Is this technology still too new for the home pc?

I mean if they are aiming for the home pc market it shouldn't be this difficult. Afterall we live in a plugandplay world :)


Thanks ahead :)

P.S. We tried other Promise cards that WD sent us.
 
Just because you have a 200GB hard disk does not mean that you should have it all in one Partition.

What Windows in probably limited to is a 137GB partition. (Dont quote me on that tho).

Simply partition the drive into 2 100gb Drives. This will allow you to use all of the avilable space.
 
200gb hadd

I hear what you are saying, but you would think somewhere in the manual it would mention this if indeed this was so and/or wd support would have mentioned this as well.

But that still brings us back to square one, why have a 200gig drive if you still have to partition it to a smaller capacity, why have a promise card then?

Thanks anyway, still looking for answers :)
 
To answer the original posting, it depends first on your BIOS. On my old A7A266 mobo, I remember that one of the BIOS updates upgraded to 48-bit LBA--meaning that you can install greater than 137 GB. All new mobos will most certainly have 48-bit LBA support.

Where the problem is (as if this is *really* going to surprise you) is with Windows. Currently, only Windows 2000 SP3 and Windows XP SP1 supports partitions larger than 137 GB, but *not* by default. You have to make a very minor change to the registry.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Atapi\Parameters

Value name: EnableBigLba
Data type: REG_DWORD
Value data: 0x1

Windows XP: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;303013

Windows 2000: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;305098

Anyway, as you can see, the problem lies with installing Windows 2000 / XP on a new drive, particularly since you have to manually configure this registry entry even if you had a slipstreamed Windows CD with the appropriate service packs.

If anyone knows how to add this registry entry into the slipstreamed setup CD, then everything would be perfect. I want to smack M$ for not thinking that people would want to use large drives by default.

FYI, I know this works, because I'm running my WD 200 GB drive in one partition as my slave drive with no IDE card.

Melon
 
Thank, Thank you!

Don't you hate when people really think they are help by not addressing the question!

Melon you are a god send and I thank you most sincerely. I new there had to be an answer or at the very least an explaination as to why it wouldn't read correctly.

I'm printing out your post for future reference :) and also the links you provided.

Thanks again!!!!

I went ahead and created this cut&paste to make it easier for others, its the same for both 2000 and XP:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\atapi\Parameters]
"EnableBigLba"=dword:00000411
 
Hey melon how does that work? If you have to install windows first & make the registry change how does xp pick up the rest of the drive? Or do you install xp on a smaller drive then get it to pick up the larger second drive? What I'm trying to say is 'can you have xp installed on a 200gb drive'?
 
Originally posted by Hipster Doofus
Hey melon how does that work? If you have to install windows first & make the registry change how does xp pick up the rest of the drive? Or do you install xp on a smaller drive then get it to pick up the larger second drive? What I'm trying to say is 'can you have xp installed on a 200gb drive'?

I don't know. The only thing I can think of is finding a way to slip that registry key into an XP CD w/ SP1 slipstreamed and have it install on default. Again, shame on M$ for being so shortsighted.

Melon
 
I suppose you could install XP on a smaller partition of the disk, fix the registry and then resize the partition with, say, Partition Magic. Messy, but that's what we have to live with until M$ fixes the problem.
 
Something strikes me odd in all of this and you will most likely agree I've seen an XP machine with a partition of 1 Terabyte. Here is the link to back up my question. 1 TeraByte Now on to my question I've got and had successfully used the raid controller that came with the Western Digital 200 Gig hard drive and was able to see bout 180-190 Gigs but my cd burners started being weird and I've removed the card but I've got the third service pack for 2000 why do I only see a 128 gigs instead of 137 gigs? Not to get into why my BIOs/Windows see more to start with
 
Originally posted by Chastity
Now on to my question I've got and had successfully used the raid controller that came with the Western Digital 200 Gig hard drive and was able to see bout 180-190 Gigs but my cd burners started being weird and I've removed the card but I've got the third service pack for 2000 why do I only see a 128 gigs instead of 137 gigs? Not to get into why my BIOs/Windows see more to start with
if the cd burners were connected to the raid card, that would probably explain why they were being weird. it's recommended that you only connect harddrives up to raid controllers.

and you probably only saw 128gb instead of 137gb because 137,000,000,000 bytes equals 128gb.

those are my theories, anyway. :)
 
Well I would agree with your thoery bout not hooking the cd drives up to the controller card that is supplied with WDD 200gig drive. However I did try having my cd burners using the motherboard ide channel and the harddrive on the controller card and the computer would not boot so I tried with all of the drives on the controller card and it worked.
 

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