Large external drive being seen as smaller size.

  • Thread starter Thread starter Lila Duncan
  • Start date Start date
L

Lila Duncan

Hi,
Hi,
I need more storage for my laptop, so bought a 250GB Western Digital HD,
fitted into the combined USB2/Firewire
external enclosure shown here:
http://s73969325.oneandoneshop.co.u...Firewire+Anti-Shock+Enclosure+=28ME720U2FW=29

Case spec doesn't indicate any limitation on drive capacity.
The problem is that the 250GB drive is shown as being 127GB in WinXP.
The OS has been upgraded to SP1.
I used WinXP's Disk Management system to format and make the drive visible
to the OS.

According to the BIOS information on my Gericom Laptop, LBA mode is
supported and the LBA/LargeMode setting, which offers the options Auto &
Disabled, is set to Auto.
As the drive capacity being seen by the OS is less than the publicised
137GB limit imposed by earlier versions of WinXP, the 127GB limit may be
caused by the case electronics. Can anyone please advise me on this?
Regards,
 
There is no 128GiB/137GB limit for USB/FW in Win 2K/XP, only for some IDE
drivers. The enclosure bridge board has the limitation.

Did you look for a firmware update for the enclosure? Did you try on a
Firewire port?

\
 
Use the the Diskpart command from the command prompt. Type diskpart.exe in
the run command and the Command Prompt window will open. You will be
working inside the window, similar to fdisk. Then type "list volume". Then
type "select volume ?" ( Enter the volume designation for you external hard
drive). Then type "extend size" and this will extend the volume to include
all space on your hard drive. Just refer to Microsoft KBarticle 325590 for
using Diskpart.

Regards,
Bill
 
Thanks for you reply. There seems to be a lot of factors that could be
affecting the situation and I'm only part of the way to understanding them.
There is no 128GiB/137GB limit for USB/FW in Win 2K/XP, only for some IDE
drivers.
Click to expand...

Does this mean that the considerations about having a BIOS capable and
configured for 48bit LBA doesn't apply to these external drives?
The enclosure bridge board has the limitation.
Click to expand...

I've been connecting the drive to the laptop using the USB2 cable and the
limitation has been consistent in that situation. I took the drive to a
friend's PC and tried it there. WinXP on the PC immediately saw all of the
drive's capacity. I would have done this test using the same USB2 cable as
was used for the laptop connection but due to circumstances, the connection
to the PC was made with a Firewire cable. I don't know if the means of
connection was significant but it does seem to confirm that the case
electronics are not where the fault lies.
Did you look for a firmware update for the enclosure?
Click to expand...

Not yet but I will.

Regards,
 
Use the the Diskpart command from the command prompt. Type diskpart.exe in
the run command and the Command Prompt window will open. You will be
working inside the window, similar to fdisk. Then type "list volume". Then
type "select volume ?" ( Enter the volume designation for you external hard
drive). Then type "extend size" and this will extend the volume to include
all space on your hard drive. Just refer to Microsoft KBarticle 325590 for
using Diskpart.

Regards,
Bill
Click to expand...

Thanks Bill, It was nice to use something as basic as diskpart to work on
the problem. I'm pretty sure that if I'd used this method immediately after
the first attempt at setting up the disk with WinXP Disk Management, I
would 've made some progress. What seems to have got in the way is that I
took the external drive to another PC for formatting. After this, instead
of the earlier, useable, 128GB single partition, I had 2 apparently healthy
116GB partitions, which when brought back to the laptop wouldn't show up at
all in WinXP Disk Management, or Diskpart.

Both partitions do show up in "My Computer" as F & G though. The first has
a size being shown as 116GB. The other is listed but has no size info
attached. When the drive attempts to become active, I get a message
containing: "Windows delayed write failed. ...unable to save all the data
for the file F:/$Mft..."

Attempting to reformat via the drive's context menu in My Computer is a
non-starter.
I thought I might be able to overcome this by reformatting using a similar
method as you described for Diskpart but when I tried Start>Run>Format.exe
I just got an error message.
Stuck! Temporarily I hope. :-)

Regards,
 
It sounds like your enclosure has a 128GiB limit for USB but none for
Firewire. Pretty bad design, but it's been reported before.
 
Firmware inside the drive enclosure must be able to handle BigATA drives
(over 137 GB). It should be explicitly stated in the drive enclosure
specifications. If it doesn't say so, you won't be able to use a big drive.
 
It sounds like your enclosure has a 128GiB limit for USB but none for
Firewire. Pretty bad design, but it's been reported before.
Click to expand...

Hi again, attempts at solving this problem have caused several
hiccups here. So there's been some delay in my responding to your
message.

It appears that you're exactly right about where the limitations are.
I bought the combination USB2/Firewire case because I envisaged the
possibility of streaming data from a video camera to the laptop using
the firewire port, while having the external storage accessible via
the USB2 port. Under these circumstances this isn't going to work.
So, I think I'll get the case swapped for one that does function as
expected.
Thanks very much for the advice.
 
Firmware inside the drive enclosure must be able to handle BigATA drives
(over 137 GB). It should be explicitly stated in the drive enclosure
specifications. If it doesn't say so, you won't be able to use a big drive.
Click to expand...

The spec, as available on the sales web pages was not that thorough.
There was no indication of any size limitations though, so I'll send
the case back to the supplier.
 
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