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TheEmrys · Fri Mar 21, 2003 12:54 am

I'm using a 200 gig WD HD in a SFF. In order to format it, I had to use the PCI controller card because, according to WD, Windows will not support hd's bigger than 137 gigs. Now, is this only for formating, or once its formatted, can I use it on the straight IDE controller and free up my PCI slot? I'm hesitant to just try it and see because I'm a kazaa fiend with tons of mp3s and divx pr0... I mean divx Disney movies and MST3K. Anyone know anything that'll help me? Or am I stuck with using a pci slot? The HD isn't my primary, its my secondary, as I have an 80 gig for my boot drive.

b3n113 · Fri Mar 21, 2003 1:16 am

Windows has little to do with it - I believe it's just a matter of upgrading your bios to support the higher geometry. However a windows side driver may also be in order.

b3n113 · Fri Mar 21, 2003 1:35 am

That is if the controller even supports the higher capacity drives - that's something you'll need to check in with the drive manufacture.

Forge · Fri Mar 21, 2003 2:20 am

137GB is the barrier for older 32bit IDE. There have been several of these barriers, at 800MB/2GB/8GB/32GB/80GB/137GB. If your SFF is even sort of recent, it should work fine on the mobo IDE. Testing is not dangerous to data, either. Either it'll work correctly, it'll show most of the drive, or the drive just won't show up at all/will appear unformatted. If you switch to the mobo IDE and it gets a drive letter/label, open it up. See if all your folders/files are there. If so, you should be fine. If not, shut down and toss it back on the controller card.

No drivers will be necessary, aside from ones for the controller card... Windows 2000/XP understand hard disks up to like 2TB, in theory, and that limit is NTFS, IIRC.

It's really, really big, anyways. Way more than 137 or 200GB.

Austin · Fri Mar 21, 2003 5:08 pm

Yep update you BIOS and install the latest mobo drivers (check manu & chipset). Then check your BIOS settings, HD jumpers (unlikely) etc. Part of the ATA133 std catered for HDs larger than 137GB but from what I last heard most ATA100 ctrl'ers should work fine with a BIOS update.

Forge · Sat Mar 22, 2003 3:38 am

Yeah, 48 bit LBA is part of the ATA133 spec. It's also supported on any IDE controller worth using.

SuperSpy · Sat Mar 22, 2003 3:55 am

I did a quick google, and found out that NTFS can actually handle volumes up to 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 bytes (16 EXAbytes!)

Looks like 48 bit LBA needs to move over :-P

TheEmrys · Sat Mar 22, 2003 4:40 am

Well, I took out the pci card... during the windows boot, it dealt with a ton of orphaned files... my mp3s. not sure if it was all of them, but there was quite a few. I'm noticing a few anomolies, also. A few of my movie files cannot be moved or deleted because of "corruption" but they play just fine. Also, I can't defreg with MS defrag or Norton Speed disk till I do a chkdsk /f. I'll see what happens. Thanks all for the help.

Forge · Sat Mar 22, 2003 5:46 am

If you switch to the mobo IDE and it gets a drive letter/label, open it up. See if all your folders/files are there. If so, you should be fine. If not, shut down and toss it back on the controller card.

Congratulations. Some of your files might now be corrupted. It may have changed geometry because of the controller swap, or your onboard controller might not be using 48bit LBA.

Either way, DO NOT go off defragging/scandisking!! You're taking a minor problem and making it bigger by potentially CORRUPTING EVERYTHING you modify!!

The problems you describe sound very similar to an uncorrected geometry change. This is BAD NEWS.

TheEmrys · Sat Mar 22, 2003 12:36 pm

Splendid. Would I avoid the problem by using the pci card again? Here's my situation. I'm using a shuttle cube. I've got a 20 and a 60 gig hd sitting doing nothing. I've got an 80 already in the cube. Should I back up all of my data, reformat, and then recopy everything over? Its a pain in the butt because of the SFF and limited power, but I could do it. Its not like I've got anything else to do today........ And I really would like to save the stuff. I've got a DVD rip of the two towers (oscar preview) and hard to replace stuff.... like 6,000 mp3s.

Forge · Sat Mar 22, 2003 1:49 pm

Well, if you put the hard disk on the onboard controller and format there, it will use the onboard IDE's LBA geometry. That should fix the problem. Does the full 200GB show up?

If so, then it's a geometry shift, fixable only by moving the HDD back to the PCI card or reformat.

If the full size does not appear, then the onboard IDE is using 32bit LBA and you need a BIOS update to proceed.

Sorry to sound alarming, but I didn't know if you had the data backed up, and working on files on a drive with shifted geometry CAN cause file corruption, and in the most difficult type.... The 'tiny little errors here, there and everywhere' variety.... Blips in MP3s, bad frames in AVIs, OS fails to boot from the shifted drive, etc.

TheEmrys · Sat Mar 22, 2003 2:14 pm

Okay, shouldn't be problem then. I have an update to the BIOS available, but didn't want to jury-rig a floppy drive. But to tell the truth, for this I will. Thanks for the info. Looks like I have a project today after all.

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Using 137+ gig hd's....

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