SATA Help

[E-1337]

Seem to be having issues with the size limits on my 300 Gig WD SATA drive. I'm running XP, SP2, AMD 64bit 3800+, 256 meg v-card, Asus A8N SLI Deluxe mobo, and I also have a 120 gig Maxtor IDE drive installed and working fine. There is nothing on the SATA drive, all my stuff is on the 120 gig one. The problem is this. My 300 gig registers as 300 gig in the BIOS, but it only shows 127 gig in windows. How can I get the full capacity of my drive to become available?

[rspassey]

Under storage manager, does a lot of unallocated space show up on the drive, or does it show that the full drive has been formated?

[Panama Red]

Shouldn't be happening with SP2 installed. Regardless, take a look at this MS KB article. Use it as a guide to make sure 48 bit LBA is enabled.

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

If you installed the 300 before SP2 was installed, that may account for the missing Gb's. Take a look in Disk Management and see in there is a large unformatted area showing. You'll end up with 2 partitions if you format it now. You'd need a 3rd party partition program like Partition Magic to combine the two partitions.

[E-1337]

Anyway, I dl SP2 now, and I thought that would fix it, but to no avail. Ahhh, I just looked into disk management, and there was the rest of it. 127 gig free (99%) and then there was 151 gig that was unallocated! Yahtzee! Now I just format that and partion magic that sucker together and bingo right? :D

[Panama Red]

Bingo! Right. :D ;)

[E-1337]

:d :d :d :d :d