Thread: 400gig hard drive

Does it have a partition by any chance.....thats about it from me

Is it an older G3 or G4 Mac? They sometimes can only see around 140gb, though I have heard there is a utility that can help them see the remainder.

I think it has something to do with the different views of what a Gb is. Your hard disk manufacturer thinks it is 1000mb, but windows probably thinks it is 1024mb...thereby creating a "loss".

Oops..misread...

You may have hit some kind of Bios limit or something...? What is your computer?

Originally Posted by q9

I think it has something to do with the different views of what a Gb is. Your hard disk manufacturer thinks it is 1000mb, but windows probably thinks it is 1024mb...thereby creating a "loss". Just bung it in and forget about it

Thats a loss of 263 Gb, not explained by the difference between 1000mb and 1024mb.

What type is your motherboard and how old? Some older boards will need a BIOS update to "see" large capacity disks. Some will not be able to be flashed.

Glenn

Originally Posted by Geoff Dean

Thats a loss of 263 Gb, not explained by the difference between 1000mb and 1024mb.

You are far too quick

Yes, I realised my mistake and corrected already...

Or is it the version of windows? Didn't earlier versions than (big maybe) Win XP SP2 have an upper limit on HDD size??

Someone who knows what the hell I'm on about here please chip in.

Edit: late rethink: is it maybe the FAT32 vs NTFS file system that has the upper limit?

well first I would go to "start"> "my computer"> then right click on available drives ....a,c,d,e, etc .....select "properties" and view how much space you have on each one.....then do the math

Its most likely a limitation of your motherboard. Sometimes a BIOS update will fix the problem, sometimes it goes deeper than that (the actual controller on the board may not support it). Your system needs to support '48bit LBA translation'. One way to find out is to contact the manufacturer of your motherboard.

As long as you have one of the following operating systems, then the OS itself is not the problem:

Windows XP Home Service Pack 1 (SP1) or higher
Windows XP Professional SP1 or higher
Windows 2000 Professional SP3 or higher
Windows 2000 Server SP3 or higher

One way you might be able to get around it is to purchase an additional ATA controller card that does support 48bit LBA. You then plug the new hard drive into that.

To a certain extent there have always been limitations on large hard drives in older systems, most people just don't come across it unless they are putting particularly large hard drives in particularly older systems.

Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows ME will not support big drives even if you install all hotfixes.

Windows 2000, 2003 and XP do not support big drives by default; you will have to install the latest service pack in order to get big drives working properly on these OS.
Windows Vista does not have any issue with big drives.

Edited: No need. I'd just be repeating myself anyway.

Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows ME will not support big drives even if you install all hotfixes

Umm, what is classified as a big drive?
I am running 98, and have a 300gig (unpartitioned ) and a 120gig (partitioned) drive installed and working with no probs

Originally Posted by tameriska

Umm, what is classified as a big drive?
I am running 98, and have a 300gig (unpartitioned ) and a 120gig (partitioned) drive installed and working with no probs

Is the 300gb drive ATA or IDE - and if its ATA, do you have a 3rd party ATA controller in an older system or a newer system with 98 installed.

Do you use a DDO?

It is possible to get a 300gb working in W98, but not 'easily' for the average 'boffin'. As in, it won't natively support them.

Ok, the MB is a Gigabyte that I bought a few years ago.
Harddrive is Western Digital IDE, just chained to a 120gig something (cant see the label at the moment).
In the device properties, it just shows up as a GENERIC IDE DISK TYPE 47

Do you use a DDO?

Umm, wouldn't have a clue, don't know what one is

It is possible to get a 300gb working in W98, but not 'easily' for the average 'boffin'. As in, it won't natively support them.

I honestly didn't have a clue about that. I did have problems previously with an older system MB only recognising a 20g as an 8g.
I am probable just lucky that I bought most of my hardware about 4 years old (specifically for the purpose of running 98) and have added bigger bits along the way