Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: SteveBailey on January 22, 2007, 10:04:56 PM
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Hey guys, I just added a 300 gig SATA to one of my computers. When I loaded it w/ the utility provided it said the max partition was 137 gigs until I ran....* mind blank*. I added HD's many times, build my own computers but I'm having a dementia moment. How can I add the rest ot the disk space. I don't mind if it has to be partitioned but I'd like to have it as one large drive for now. If I add a partition, won't I lose all the data currently stored?
For now, only Windows XP Pro is loaded on this drive. The message I got said I could add a partition AFTER loading windows.. that doesn't seem right to me.
Suggestions?
Thanks a lot for helpign me out.
Steve
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If you formatted it as NTFS, you should be able to expand the volume to fit the rest of the drive using Drive Manager once in Windows. Right click My Computer, select 'Manage', navigate to Disk, and go from there. Shouldn't break anything.
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Yeah what Chairboy said....remove it first.
Rinse and Repeat..
Mac
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remove it?
I did format for NTFS
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ttt
I tried to extend the partition in diskpart and failed. here is step by step:
Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.
C:\Documents and Settings\Steve>diskpart
Microsoft DiskPart version 5.1.3565
Copyright (C) 1999-2003 Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: ARIZONA-3U1LVIM
DISKPART> list volume
Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------
Volume 0 D DVD-ROM 0 B
Volume 1 E NTFS Partition 93 GB Healthy
Volume 2 C NTFS Partition 128 GB Healthy System
Volume 3 F Removeable 0 B
Volume 4 G Removeable 0 B
Volume 5 H Removeable 0 B
Volume 6 I Removeable 0 B
DISKPART> select volume 2
Volume 2 is the selected volume.
DISKPART> extend
DiskPart failed to extend the volume.
Please make sure the volume is valid for extending.
DISKPART>
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I wouldn't use the utility. I'd partition and format it completely under windows.
Use the windows disk management utility, delete all existing partitions, and then create a single new one using the full available space. To get to this utility, go to programs, administrative tools, computer management, storage, disk management.
I've found windows to be much better for partitioning and formatting hard drives than the third party utilities.
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"You cannot extend the current system or boot partitions."
This is my problem isn't it? How do I get aorund this?
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Originally posted by SteveBailey
"You cannot extend the current system or boot partitions."
This is my problem isn't it? How do I get aorund this?
You might need a bios update or a completely new motherboard. If you see this problem and you have XP SP2 installed, it's a bios limitation most likely. In theory you could have 48-bit LBA disabled in XP but I can't see why that would be unless you're using an upgraded XP and it inherited some crap from the old system.
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Mother board is brand new ASUS P5N32-SLI Premium.
Hmmmm
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Well if the mb is new you really shouldn't witness this problem. AFAIK there aren't so old XP installation disks that wouldnt support large harddrives as default. Windows2000 pre-sp2 had the problem, so did W9x.
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I get to this screen:
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d191/AZC4guy/disk.jpg)
I want to move the partition on C but the "remove parttion" option is greyed out when I right click on it.
edit: yes I am signed on as admin.
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why move c? delete the others and make c fill the space left
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Originally posted by ~Caligula~
why move c? delete the others and make c fill the space left
there is only one partition (the C) on the drive. The rest is unallocated space.
I have to figure out how to enable 48-bit LBA I think
edit: i am running win xp SP 2
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The computer is booting off of the new drive apparently. Did you use a utility to copy your installation to the new drive already? If so, that is part of your problem.
Whenever I get a new larger drive, the first thing I do is put it in the computer and partition/format it as a secondary drive, not the system drive. Then I'll do whatever I need to do in order to get the system copied over to the new drive, whether using norton ghost or windows backup or whatever.
From that screenshot, you're screwed and are going to have to start over if you want to use the entire 300 gig drive as your c: drive. You basically installed windows on an improperly formatted hard drive and now you can't change the main system partition.
You might be able to change a setting in bios or in the windows disk manager to have it boot from your old drive again, and then you can mess with the new drive's partitions. But as it is now, you're already booting from the new drive so you won't be able to do anything to the boot partition.
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Originally posted by eagl
The computer is booting off of the new drive apparently. Did you use a utility to copy your installation to the new drive already? If so, that is part of your problem.
Whenever I get a new larger drive, the first thing I do is put it in the computer and partition/format it as a secondary drive, not the system drive. Then I'll do whatever I need to do in order to get the system copied over to the new drive, whether using norton ghost or windows backup or whatever.
From that screenshot, you're screwed and are going to have to start over if you want to use the entire 300 gig drive as your c: drive. You basically installed windows on an improperly formatted hard drive and now you can't change the main system partition.
I did not copy my installastion. It is a fresh XP install. The old HD seems to have some driver conflicts so I started from scratch on the new HD. The format utility that came w/ the HD told me that the 137 gig was as high as I can go until; i did something(forgot) so I did not have the option to format to 300gig. MyXP is an upgrade from win 98.
Do I need to enable 48-bit lba? how?
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A question - when you did the windows XP installation, was the hard drive already formatted? Did it give you the option to use an existing partition or create a new one?
Windows is pretty good about detecting issues like this during installation and enabling whatever is necessary to get the full drive space available. So to help troubleshoot more, we need to know exactly what options windows gave you during the installation.
If it gave you the option of repartitioning the drive or deleting the existing partition and repartitioning, you probably needed to delete the existing partition and have windows repartition the drive.
What I'm worried about is that you mentioned using the "utility provided", but those utilities may not be as good as the partition tool built into windows setup during installation.
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I had a similiar problem with my wife's laptop, going from a 20 gig to an 80 gig hard drive. I tried everything I could, bios updates, hard drive soft-bios overlays, several different utilities. Nothing worked until I installed windows from scratch out of desperation. At the windows setup question asking about where to install windows, I selected the choices to completely wipe and repartition/reformat the drive. And windows somehow figured it out and allowed the use of the whole drive.
That said, if you go into bios, the hard drive settings should be set to "auto" and you should be using the latest bios available for the motherboard.
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Windows install also limited me to the 137 gig.
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HD's are set to auto by default on my mobo
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Short summary answer - I think you need to skip the use of the included utility that came with the hard drive and re-install windows. During installation, you need to tell windows setup to repartition and reformat the hard drive using all available space.
An optional step would be to use that utility disk to wipe the existing partition before running windows setup again so that windows sees a completely bare hard drive from the beginning, but this may not be necessary.
If it doesn't work, then I'm stumped.
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Is there any easy way to see if my bios is 48-bit laba compatible?
I would be stunned if it isn't... the mobo is a month old.
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I think I may have found a problem. microsoft says I need to go to:
Go to the following path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Atapi\Parameters
and :
Next set the EnableBigLba registry value to 1 in that registry key. Exit Regedit and reboot.
But when I get there, all I see is:
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d191/AZC4guy/registry.jpg)
the "EnableBigLba registry value" is nowhere to be found
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I have no idea about 48 bit lba. There is no reason why that hard drive, a reasonably new mobo, and windows should not work together.
I am pretty much convinced that the problem is with the utility that came with the hard drive, and that a fresh installation attempt with a completely bare unpartitioned drive will be more successful.
It is remotely possible that you have a really old version of windows XP and the installer can't handle large hard drives, but I kind of doubt it.
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I do have on old version of XP... but have SP 2 and it is fully updated. I'm really scratching my head here. Thanks for all your help and time. :)
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You could always buy a new WinXP disk that has SP2 on it already :)
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Originally posted by SteveBailey
the "EnableBigLba registry value" is nowhere to be found
# From the Edit menu, select New, DWORD Value.
# Enter the name EnableBigLba, then press Enter.
# Double-click the new value, set it to 1, then click OK.
# Close the registry editor.
# Restart the machine for the change to take effect.
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Good old partition magic works wonders when you have to resize or split harddrives.
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Originally posted by SteveBailey
I do have on old version of XP... but have SP 2 and it is fully updated. I'm really scratching my head here. Thanks for all your help and time. :)
Here is the issue. The original releases of XP had borked up the 48 bit LBA support (one of the many reasons to never be on the bleeding edge, stuff is borked). If you are unlucky enough to be stuck with an old version, even with the installation of SP2, XP will not allow you to get past 138GB per volume.
You can force it, but MS pretty much gaurantees you will have corrupt data if you do. I have tested this and sure enough, you get corrupted data.
You actually need a copy of XP that already has SP2 installed. While there are earlier versions of XP which work, the best cut-off I have been able to find is using a copy od XP with SP2 installed already.
EDIT: By the way, there are utlities out there, like Seagate's format and partioning program, which will automatically make the patches to the Windows registry to enable the 48 bit LBA support. While that soulnds good, these programs do not actually test and verify it will work correctly.
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Roy and everyone, thanks so much for taking the time to help me!
The solution presented itself last night when my head hit the pillow. I had tried to use DISKPART to extend the partition, as discussed earlier in the thread, but I couldn't because you cannot extend the partition on the system disk.
So, when I woke up this morning I switched the boot priorities on my HD's, thus making the old disk the system disk. I went back into DISKPART and extended the partition in question, without any problems. This whole process took me less that 5 minutes. LOL, I couldn't believe I didn't think of this. Funny stuff huh?
Thanks again, everyone!
Steve
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Umm .......... isnt that what eagl said to do in the first place? lol
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Originally posted by StarOfAfrica2
Umm .......... isnt that what eagl said to do in the first place? lol
He said he does this from the start of puttin a new HD in but immediately after that said:
From that screenshot, you're screwed and are going to have to start over if you want to use the entire 300 gig drive as your c: drive. You basically installed windows on an improperly formatted hard drive and now you can't change the main system partition.
I have to admit though, who thought of it is not important to me. I am grateful for the help eagl and others offered and glad that the problem is solved.
:)