XP and HDD >137Gb

[risk_reversal]

I wonder if someone can help me to be clear about the following please.

I understand that there are two inter-related areas with regard to drives that exceed this capacity barrier. One is the need for 48bit LBA within windows to have partitions greater than this size and the other is to have a BIOS that is itself able to address a drive of that size.

Bios issues aside, I was always of the impression that XP SP1 (integrated) could address 48bit LBA (ie HDD>137Gb) without issues and then I ran across the info from MS listed below which suggests that one also needs the Atapi.sys version to be 5.1.2600.1135 or later.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/303013

So in my case I have XP SP1 with Atapi.sys version 5.1.2600.1106, therefore I would need to apply Microsoft Knowledge Base article 331958, referred to in kb303013 above.

This would in the first instance update my Atapi.sys version to the required one ie v1135 (or later).

Am I correct in my understanding please, or is the MS article just confusing me.

Many thanks for any help you can provide.

[pam123]

No you've got it right.
Micorsoft's SP1 was itself updated regularly.
That hot fix would have been in the automatic updates from 2 years ago and anyone with a 137 GB or larger drive probably thought it was about time .
The solution now isn't an out of date hot fix but SP2.
So if you're buying one of those 200 Gb or larger drives you'll need the latest service pack. Since, judging by your version number, you've missed a few updates from the boys out in Redmond.
Also, your security fixes probably aren't up to date either and those you really do need.

[risk_reversal]

Many thanks for your reply pam123 and for clarifying the issue. I only added XP to my system fairly recently and opted for the SP1 integrated variant in order to make my life easier given that sp2 seemed to be causing some issues with a number of users.

I am not sure that I have gathered enough confidence to take the leap to SP2 just yet but appreciate what you said as regards an outdated fix.

Cheers