[cdl2488]

Ok, i have a 250Gb sata drive and i know about the 137Gb limit in non sp1/2 windows XP, so what if...

i partition the drive into 4 sections. the first 2 will be 5Gb each, the second 2 about 120Gb each. I will install win xp non sp1/2 in one of the 5Gb partitions, and windows 2000 SP4 in the second 5Gb partition. this leaves the first 120Gb partition within the 137Gb limit.

so if i only use the second 120Gb partition in 2000 SP4 (which doesnt have the 137gb limit) and not use it in XP at all, would this get round the problem?

i did this before in my old win ME system with a 160Gb HDD - before i knew about the 137Bg limit - i just used fdisk and formatted it to 160Gb and ME had no problems with it, untill it went over 137Gb, and started writing data over the system area of the disk. i thought the drive had broken, so sent it off and got a replacement under warranty

[CDsDontBurn]

the 137Gb barrier is also MoBo dependant. I believe that win2k sp4 itself can go around that barrier, but if your MoBo doesn't support anything over 137Gb, then your screwed anyways . best way to find out is to try .

also, if you get a PCI HDD controller card, it will go around that barrier no problem

[cdl2488]

the mobo can support it, according to VIA anyway. but a PCI card's not a bad idea, i was thinking about it out of desperation, but will a HDD on a PCI card controller be able to act as a boot drive?

[CDsDontBurn]

it should. you just need to tell your BIOS to boot from another device, and direct it to the PCI bus where the controller card would be. i think that's how it works anyways, if i remember correctly.

but try it out first on the MoBo, so you don't have to buy a controller card if you don't have to.

[Eck]

Actually, FDISK will just see what your bios is reporting so if you use a large drive and you are able to FDISK and format that hurdle is done with.

Now, for 9x systems the problem is the ESDI_506.PDR driver. This is the file that doesn't deal with greater than 137GB properly.

There is a new driver replacement available that deals properly with large drives.

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=78592

You still install your normal motherboard chipset drivers, but replace ESDI_506.PDR with the new one.

The author has created one for each different operating system so it's best to check first! Don't want to use the wrong one. I think it's in the System\IOSUBSYS folder.