need advice on seeing 250GB drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter ~Mike Hollywood
  • Start date Start date
M

~Mike Hollywood

Hi,
My buddy bought a 250GB drive and put it in as a slave in an older athlon 1G
system.
Windows only sees 130 GB.
Is a eide controller card the answer?
Thanks,
Mike
 
~Mike Hollywood said:
Hi,
My buddy bought a 250GB drive and put it in as a slave in an older athlon
1G system.
Windows only sees 130 GB.
Is a eide controller card the answer?
Thanks,
Mike
Click to expand...
What OS/service pack? Has he got latest BIOS version for the
motherboard? (Whatever type it is!!)

Mike.
 
~Mike Hollywood said:
Hi,
My buddy bought a 250GB drive and put it in as a slave in an older athlon 1G
system.
Windows only sees 130 GB.
Click to expand...
It sounds like your motherboard can only accept drives upto 137GB.
I'm not sure if this issue can be fixed with a BIOS update or if these
problems go deeper than that.
Have a look for a BIOS update on the mobo manufacturers website and see.
If not then ...
Is a eide controller card the answer?
Click to expand...

This may be the only answer.
Cheers!
 
Hi,
My buddy bought a 250GB drive and put it in as a slave in an older athlon 1G
system.
Windows only sees 130 GB.
Is a eide controller card the answer?
Thanks,
Mike
Click to expand...
The BIOS is irrelevant. It's the Windows driver that provides access
to the hard drives. If you use an EIDE controller card, you have to
install the Windows driver for that card to make it work. It's that
driver that provides 48-LBA access to the disk drive.

To enable 48-bit LBA capability for the disk interface that is on the
motherboard, install SP1 or 2 for Windows XP, or SP3 or 4 plus
EnableBigLBA = 1 in the registry for Windows 2000.
 
Yes, AND you have to be running at least XP SP1 in order for Windows to
recognize larger than 137 GB.
 
The BIOS is irrelevant. It's the Windows driver that provides access
to the hard drives. If you use an EIDE controller card, you have to
install the Windows driver for that card to make it work. It's that
driver that provides 48-LBA access to the disk drive.

To enable 48-bit LBA capability for the disk interface that is on the
motherboard, install SP1 or 2 for Windows XP, or SP3 or 4 plus
EnableBigLBA = 1 in the registry for Windows 2000.
Click to expand...

The BIOS is NOT irrelevant. Some older hardware just won't support the
larger drives. I had a similar problem with an old external USB drive.
The interface would not recognize a new 300 GB HD. Bought a new enclosure,
and it worked fine.
 
The BIOS is NOT irrelevant. Some older hardware just won't support the
larger drives. I had a similar problem with an old external USB drive.
The interface would not recognize a new 300 GB HD. Bought a new enclosure,
and it worked fine.
Click to expand...

I don't understand this. Why should a USB interface limit the visible
capacity of a HDD?

I'm using Win98SE. I have a Seagate 320GB PATA drive in a USB
enclosure. Using Microsoft's drivers and tools, I managed to fdisk and
format the drive to its full capacity, as a single volume, from a
Windows DOS box.

- Franc Zabkar
 
Gee, my bad, shouda given more details, it's a home brew box running XP
Professional SP2. The box is about 4 years old or so, has the amd athlon 1
Gig or so, processor in it. I'll be over at my buddie's house tomorrow and
will check for shore and post the details. Frank Z may be onto another
solution here, I mean, if it works on win98, why not Se, I mean, how about
buying a usb enclosure and putting the drive in that, instead of in the PC?
Mike
 
Here's the specs on the box:
Its an Athlon running at 850 Mhz, Windows XP Professional SP2, 1.152 Gigs of
memory.
Mobo: Board: 8363-686A(KT7A,KT7A-RAID v0.5)
Bus Clock: 100 megahertz
BIOS: Award Software International, Inc. 6.00 PG 07/05/2001

It looks like we are down to either a controller card, or
an external USB enclosure. I think the usb solution would
be the easiest, but then he has to deal with usb speeds, etc.

Thanks for all the input so far.
\Mike
 
Franc Zabkar said:
I don't understand this. Why should a USB interface limit the visible
capacity of a HDD?
Click to expand...

If the firmware doesn't support 48-bit LBA (logical block addressing), the
max it can see is 137 GB. Whether that firmware is in the MoBo BIOS
(internal HD) or the external enclosure's USB to IDE interface, the result
is the same.

As an example, my old enclosure works fine with the 40 GB HD I originally
put in it, but will not fully format my new 300 GB HD. The new HD works
fine in a new enclosure.
 
~Long John Silver~ said:
Here's the specs on the box:
Its an Athlon running at 850 Mhz, Windows XP Professional SP2, 1.152 Gigs
of memory.
Mobo: Board: 8363-686A(KT7A,KT7A-RAID v0.5)
Bus Clock: 100 megahertz
BIOS: Award Software International, Inc. 6.00 PG 07/05/2001

It looks like we are down to either a controller card, or
an external USB enclosure. I think the usb solution would
be the easiest, but then he has to deal with usb speeds, etc.
Click to expand...

Depends on the BIOS... Is there a setting in the BIOS Setup for "Large
Hard Drive Support"? If so, and it is currently switched off, turning it
on may solve the problem.
 
~Long John Silver~ said:
Here's the specs on the box:
Its an Athlon running at 850 Mhz, Windows XP Professional SP2, 1.152 Gigs of
memory.
Mobo: Board: 8363-686A(KT7A,KT7A-RAID v0.5)
Bus Clock: 100 megahertz
BIOS: Award Software International, Inc. 6.00 PG 07/05/2001

It looks like we are down to either a controller card, or
an external USB enclosure. I think the usb solution would
be the easiest, but then he has to deal with usb speeds, etc.
Click to expand...
Hi,

There may not be any need for that.

That motherboard model number sounds like an Abit board (KT7A and KT7A-RAID)
This link:
http://www.abit.com.tw/page/uk/down...TLE_ON_SCREEN=KT7A-RAID&pSOCKET_TYPE=Socket A
should take you to the BIOS page for that board and sure enough there is a
BIOS update that supports drives over 137GB

Obviously make sure that it /is/ an Abit board, but if so then that should
solve your problems.

Cheers!
 
If the firmware doesn't support 48-bit LBA (logical block addressing), the
max it can see is 137 GB. Whether that firmware is in the MoBo BIOS
(internal HD) or the external enclosure's USB to IDE interface, the result
is the same.
Click to expand...

I'm aware of the 48-bit LBA issue, it's just that I'm having some
difficulty understanding which components in the system are
responsible for which function.

At this very moment I have a 320GB Seagate drive in a USB enclosure
connected to an old socket 7 motherboard via the motherboard chipset's
USB 1.1 controller. My OS is Win98SE.

As neither the BIOS nor Win98's ESDI_506.pdr ATA/ATAPI driver (this is
for IDE interfaces, so it isn't involved) are 48-bit LBA aware, then
the functionality must be provided by USBSTOR.SYS/USBNTMAP.SYS and/or
the enclosure.

AISI, the various ATA/ATAPI commands could be passed to the drive
directly, with the enclosure providing just the serial-to-parallel
conversion. Alternatively, the software could be sending block
read/write commands that are converted into ATA/ATAPI commands by a
controller within the enclosure.
As an example, my old enclosure works fine with the 40 GB HD I originally
put in it, but will not fully format my new 300 GB HD. The new HD works
fine in a new enclosure.
Click to expand...

As you say, it appears that the chip in the enclosure is solely
responsible for 48-bit LBA support:

http://www.jmicron.com/JM20337.html
http://www.jmicron.com/PDF/JM20338/JM20337.pdf

• Compliance with USB Mass Storage Class Bulk-Only Transport
Specification
• Support ATA/ATAPI Ultra DMA Mode
• Support ATA/ATAPI PACKET command feature set
• Support ATA/ATAPI LBA48 bit addressing mode

Furthermore, Microsoft's documentation confirms this:

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/usbfaq.mspx

====================================================================
Q: Does usbstor.sys need to be modified to support disks over 137 GB
in size?

No. Support for disks that are larger than 137 GB is not an issue for
the USB mass storage class driver. However, such support is an issue
with the USB-ATA bridge chip in the external USB storage device.

USB-ATA bridge chip vendors are working on new devices that support
the 48-bit ATA LBA mode. When these devices are available, the storage
limit on a single device should be 2048 GB.
====================================================================

BTW, the usbstor.sys and usbntmap.sys drivers were installed by the
Maximus Decim driver set.

- Franc Zabkar
 
~Mike Hollywood said:
Hi,
My buddy bought a 250GB drive and put it in as a slave in an older athlon 1G
system.
Windows only sees 130 GB.
Is a eide controller card the answer?
Thanks,
Mike
Click to expand...
It might need a BIOS upgrade if there is one available.
 
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