160 Gig HD formatted at 127Gig

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mike Hyndman
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M

Mike Hyndman

I've been given a 160GByte harddrive that was taken out of a PC whos BIOS
wouldn't support drives in excess of 127GByte formatted. The drive is empty
but formatted in NTFS and if I put this into a PC whose BIOS does support
drives in excess of 127 GByte I am unable to restore this drive to its
maximum size of 160GB. No matter what I do to it, formatting etc., it
remains at 127GB. There is only one partition on this drive and I would like
to keep it this way. PC on XPPro.

Any suggestions gratefully recieved

MH
 
Mike said:
I've been given a 160GByte harddrive that was taken out of a PC whos
BIOS wouldn't support drives in excess of 127GByte formatted. The
drive is empty but formatted in NTFS and if I put this into a PC
whose BIOS does support drives in excess of 127 GByte I am unable to
restore this drive to its maximum size of 160GB. No matter what I do
to it, formatting etc., it remains at 127GB. There is only one
partition on this drive and I would like to keep it this way. PC on
XPPro.
Any suggestions gratefully recieved
Click to expand...


Besides the BIOS supporting it, you also have to be running at least SP1 of
Windows XP. Apparently you are not..
 
Mike said:
I've been given a 160GByte harddrive that was taken out of a PC
whos BIOS wouldn't support drives in excess of 127GByte formatted.
The drive is empty but formatted in NTFS and if I put this into a
PC whose BIOS does support drives in excess of 127 GByte I am
unable to restore this drive to its maximum size of 160GB. No
matter what I do to it, formatting etc., it remains at 127GB. There
is only one partition on this drive and I would like to keep it
this way. PC on XPPro.
Click to expand...

What is the make/model number of the drive in question?
 
What is the make/model number of the drive in question?

Shenan

HaHa I know what you are thinking ;-) Its a Samsung 1604N
The PC I have tried to reformat this drive to max on has 200Gig HD on board,
so obviously it should have no trouble with this one.

Many thanks

Mike H
 
Shenan said:
What is the make/model number of the drive in question?
Click to expand...

Mike said:
HaHa I know what you are thinking ;-) Its a Samsung 1604N
The PC I have tried to reformat this drive to max on has 200Gig HD
on board, so obviously it should have no trouble with this one.
Click to expand...

And the full size is recognized in the BIOS?
It has been re-partitioned? (Not formatted, mind you - partitioned.)
 
And the full size is recognized in the BIOS?
Click to expand...
Both PC's BIOS saw it as a 160 GB drive.
It has been re-partitioned? (Not formatted, mind you - partitioned.)
Click to expand...
Only get the option to repartition from 127 GB not 160GB.

'Tis a mystery.

Regards

Mike H
 
Mike said:
Ken,

I only had the option to partition at the 127 GB capacity, not 160GB.
Click to expand...



That sure sound to me like either the BIOS doesn't have support for 48-bit
LBA or you have a pre-SP1 version of Windows XP. But since you say that
neither of those is true, I don't have any other suggestions.
 
That sure sound to me like either the BIOS doesn't have support for 48-bit
LBA or you have a pre-SP1 version of Windows XP. But since you say that
neither of those is true, I don't have any other suggestions.
Click to expand...

Ken,

I agree regarding the original PC's BIOS, yet it did say it was a 160 GB
Samsung when booting up (just reading the drive label?) but the PC I am
trying to recovery it on has a 200GB HD which is seen correctly, both by the
BIOS and OS. Both PC's are SP2 also.

Many thanks anyway.

Mike H.
 
Mike said:
Ken,

I agree regarding the original PC's BIOS, yet it did say it was a 160
GB Samsung when booting up (just reading the drive label?) but the PC
I am trying to recovery it on has a 200GB HD which is seen correctly,
both by the BIOS and OS. Both PC's are SP2 also.
Click to expand...


If a 200GB drive is seen correctly, my suspicions that it's either the BIOS
or the Windows version is clearly wrong.

Many thanks anyway.
Click to expand...


You're welcome. Sorry I can't be more help.
 
Mike said:
Ken,

I agree regarding the original PC's BIOS, yet it did say it was a 160
GB Samsung when booting up (just reading the drive label?) but the PC
I am trying to recovery it on has a 200GB HD which is seen correctly,
both by the BIOS and OS. Both PC's are SP2 also.

Many thanks anyway.
Click to expand...


One more thought. It's probably unlikely, but worth looking into just in
case.

Is it possible that the 200GB drive is connected to an add-in IDE card with
48-bit LBA support, but you're connecting the 160 directly to the
motherboard where there's no 48-bit LBA support?
 
If a 200GB drive is seen correctly, my suspicions that it's either the
BIOS or the Windows version is clearly wrong.
Click to expand...
Ken,

Why should this be so if it sees the drive correctly?

Mike H
 
Mike

Ken made another suggestion which I think you haven't noticed.

One more thought. It's probably unlikely, but worth looking into just in
case.

Is it possible that the 200GB drive is connected to an add-in IDE card with
48-bit LBA support, but you're connecting the 160 directly to the
motherboard where there's no 48-bit LBA support?

--
Ken Blake - Microsoft MVP Windows: Shell/User
Please reply to the newsgroup

--

Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England

Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
Mike said:
Ken,

Why should this be so if it sees the drive correctly?
Click to expand...


If both the BIOS and Windows see a 200GB drive correctly, they will also see
a 160GB drive correctly.
 
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