Accessing drive > 137GB

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ohaya
  • Start date Start date
O

Ohaya

Hi,

I haven't had much success with the above (accessing a drive > 137GB) with
Win2K SP4, even with the EnableBigLba registry change.

To be more specific, if I do the EnableBigLba registry change, I can access
a drive > 137GB, but then what I'm seeing is my read speed (per HDTach)
slows down to about 2MB/s, which I believe is PIO speed. I have verified
that the IDE devices in Device Manager still show "Ultra DMA", but that is
what HDTach (and WinBench) show.

I've been wondering about this. I have the impression that others have been
successful with the EnableBigLba registry change, but I just realized that
when I installed Win2K from CD, I installed it on a FAT32 partition, i.e.,
my Win2K OS partition is FAT32, and I wonder if this is why I'm having
problems with the EnableBigLba causing the slowdown?

Has anyone here who has a drive >137GB working with Win2K done this with
Win2K on a FAT32 partition and been able to access the entire drive (or
partitions on the entire drive) without drastic slowdown?

Thanks,
Jim
 
Hi,

I haven't had much success with the above (accessing a drive > 137GB) with
Win2K SP4, even with the EnableBigLba registry change.

To be more specific, if I do the EnableBigLba registry change, I can access
a drive > 137GB, but then what I'm seeing is my read speed (per HDTach)
slows down to about 2MB/s, which I believe is PIO speed. I have verified
that the IDE devices in Device Manager still show "Ultra DMA", but that is
what HDTach (and WinBench) show.

I've been wondering about this. I have the impression that others have been
successful with the EnableBigLba registry change, but I just realized that
when I installed Win2K from CD, I installed it on a FAT32 partition, i.e.,
my Win2K OS partition is FAT32, and I wonder if this is why I'm having
problems with the EnableBigLba causing the slowdown?

Has anyone here who has a drive >137GB working with Win2K done this with
Win2K on a FAT32 partition and been able to access the entire drive (or
partitions on the entire drive) without drastic slowdown?

Thanks,
Jim
Click to expand...


I just got it going today, I was about to post a message just like yours and
by dumb luck I tried something and it worked. Here's what I've got;

Asus A7N8X-delus mobo (some very low rev number)
Maxtor 160GB SATA drive.
w2kSP4

w2k could see the drive but wouldn't let me partition it.

The large-disk registry hack from the Maxtor web site
may be necessary but it didn't solve the problem.

I use Acronis TrueImage (latest version) for disk-disk and
machine-machine via ethernet backups. I booted TI on this machine to
back it up to another system before updating the BIOS and noticed that
TI saw the disk. Since TI has partition creation tools similar to
Partition Magic i gave it a try, and created and formatted two
partitions. I've copied lots of data and run disk checks from
MyComputer/Manage/Storage and it seems to be working fine.

I know TI is based on Linux, which has SATA support. It seems
that the penguin has come thru with the goods.

It would be interesting to see if Knoppix could partition and format
your disk. It wouldn't cost anything to find out. The last time I
checked, Linux was only reading NTFS partitions, not writing them,
Acronis must have put some work into the Linux file system code.
 
I just got it going today, I was about to post a message just like yours and
by dumb luck I tried something and it worked. Here's what I've got;

Asus A7N8X-delus mobo (some very low rev number)
Maxtor 160GB SATA drive.
w2kSP4

w2k could see the drive but wouldn't let me partition it.

The large-disk registry hack from the Maxtor web site
may be necessary but it didn't solve the problem.

I use Acronis TrueImage (latest version) for disk-disk and
machine-machine via ethernet backups. I booted TI on this machine to
back it up to another system before updating the BIOS and noticed that
TI saw the disk. Since TI has partition creation tools similar to
Partition Magic i gave it a try, and created and formatted two
partitions. I've copied lots of data and run disk checks from
MyComputer/Manage/Storage and it seems to be working fine.

I know TI is based on Linux, which has SATA support. It seems
that the penguin has come thru with the goods.

It would be interesting to see if Knoppix could partition and format
your disk. It wouldn't cost anything to find out. The last time I
checked, Linux was only reading NTFS partitions, not writing them,
Acronis must have put some work into the Linux file system code.
Click to expand...


Al,

I use BootItNG (BING) for my partition management, and it didn't have
problems creating the partitions.

Using BING, I had partitioned the drive as:

- 12.5G - Win2K install 1
- 12.5G - Win2K install 2
- 100G - data
- 26G - extra partition

All partitions were FAT32.

The problem I was (see below for why the past tense) having was that if if I
did the EnableBigLba setting so that Win2K could support the full 160GB, the
read speed would drop to ~2MB/s.

That's in the past now, my week-old Samsung 160GB drive just died (BIOS no
longer sees the drive, and it makes a "ticking" sound continuously).

I'm trying to decide now whether I should take the chance on another Samsung
160GB drive, or go look for a Seagate :(... One of my main criteria is that
I want a quiet drive.

Thanks,
Jim
 
Ohaya said:
Al,

I use BootItNG (BING) for my partition management, and it didn't have
problems creating the partitions.
Click to expand...

I've never used BING or anything like it, but I do know that a
substantial amount of work I get in is from owners who use odd utility
programs (such as your BING, drive compressors, etc.)

Odie
 
Al,

I use BootItNG (BING) for my partition management, and it didn't have
problems creating the partitions.

Using BING, I had partitioned the drive as:

- 12.5G - Win2K install 1
- 12.5G - Win2K install 2
- 100G - data
- 26G - extra partition

All partitions were FAT32.

The problem I was (see below for why the past tense) having was that if if I
did the EnableBigLba setting so that Win2K could support the full 160GB, the
read speed would drop to ~2MB/s.

That's in the past now, my week-old Samsung 160GB drive just died (BIOS no
longer sees the drive, and it makes a "ticking" sound continuously).

I'm trying to decide now whether I should take the chance on another Samsung
160GB drive, or go look for a Seagate :(... One of my main criteria is that
I want a quiet drive.
Click to expand...

For the record, I ran HDtest and got 60MB/sec peak, 40MB/sec avg on the
read-only tests. I'm happy.
 
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