Formatting Barracuda 160 Gig HD with XP

Fazer6

I tried to install XP Pro onto a new Barracuda 160 Gig HD. When the HD was formatting, the CD Rom drive couldn't read the XP Pro disk, a fingerprint I think. I cleaned the disk and retried, no joy. I tried another XP Pro disk and the XP Pro installation and formatting seemed to run OK. When I checked the HD it came up as a 135 Gig HD not 160 Gig. Can I recover the missing 25 Gig or am I snookered ?

Thanks in advance for any information.

Fazer.

snappieT

Here goes the explantion again. Windows says there is 1024 in a unit, HDD manufacturers say there is 1000. Ergo:

135G = 135000M = 135000000K = 135000000000bytes (according to windows)
135000000000bytes = 131835937.5K = 128746M = 125.7G (according to HDD manufacturer)

So a product marketed as 160GB truly has a capacity of 125.7GB
You lost nothing, and it's unrecoverable

Fazer6

snapscan1212p,
Thanks for the information, I thought I had lost '25 Gig' somewhere.
Fazer6.

optikus-prime

@ snapscan I think you might be wrong, I think it is because his mainboard doesn't support 48 bit lba for hard disks bigger than 137 GB

unkel

optikus-prime wrote:

@ snapscan I think you might be wrong, I think it is because his mainboard doesn't support 48 bit lba for hard disks bigger than 137 GB

Yeah, optikus-prime is right. As soon as you install XP SP1 or SP2, you should see the full size

Inspector Gadget

I whipped out a calculator for a second just to check - 160 billion bytes (what HDD manufacturers currently use as a definition of "gigabytes", AFAIK) should come out as about 149 honest-to-goodness (real) gigabytes. Expect to possibly lose a bit more as file system overheads - when you format the drive, each partition keeps some diskspace to itself to store necessary information (like, say, where on the disk each file is ) From this perspective, snapscan1212p (despite being named after a f**king awful parallel-port Agfa scanner, if I remember correctly? ) is right.

(Just remembered that I have a 160GB Barracuda here myself here at work - it's formatted as a single NTFS partition under Win2K, and reports its size as 149.05GB after formatting - if that helps)

However, I believe that optikus-prime is also right; I suspect that the formatted capacity of your disk is simply too low to be accounted for fully by the stuff I just mentioned. Because the formatted capacity of your drive is close to the "magic" 137GB, I suspect that the controller it's connected to (either on your motherboard or some add-on card) doesn't support LBA-48. AFAIK nearly all controllers that state support for ATA-133 also do LBA-48 addressing, if your motherboard (like mine) only does ATA-100, you may have to do some digging. It may be the case that your system can be flashed with an updated BIOS that'll "fix" this - mine couldn't (aww...)

Unkel: What I've read on the subject suggests that XP SP1 or later can employ LBA-48 addressing, but only if the hardware actually supports it?

Anyway, as a word of warning, I know of people who've run into problems with this sort of thing; they've bought drives their systems can't completely 'see' (so to speak), formatted them at whatever capacity Windows told them they had, and went on their merry way; later, having either upgraded motherboards or bought a PCI controller card, they plug in the disk and it doesn't work properly - they have problems resizing partitions, or it refuses to boot, that sort of thing. I think the differences between the 'applied' and actual drive geometries (cylinders, heads, sectors, that sort of thing - a bit over my head, to be honest) is causing all sorts of pain.

So, I suggest that you check out whether your board/controller supports LBA-48, or can be made to. If so, and you're using XP, make sure you get SP1 or SP2; if you're using another flavour of Windows, your HDD manufacturer probably offers a patch you can download. *IF LBA-48 IS NOT SUPPORTED*, and you're not in a mood to go shopping for a new mobo/controller card, see if there's a jumper setting you can use to limit the drive's size to 137GB (most large drives have this option), use it, and then reformat and reinstall. This should (I understand) allow you to resize your partitions later when you get a better IDE controller as the drive will report accurate geometry to the BIOS - don't forget to change the jumper settings back though!.

Hope this helps,
Gadget

Fazer6

Thanks Everyone,
I'm overwhelmed by your responses. XP Pro including SP1 is on the way to me early next week.
My motherboard is an Asrock K7???????, I'll dig out the handbook and have a look for 'LBA-48 support' , whatever that is, and see if it can be supported.

Thanks again for all the information. I'll keep you posted on the outcome.

Fazer6.

Inspector Gadget

I should add that what I said above is based on the notion that the drive is not SATA, i.e. that it has a 40/80-pin ribbon cable connecting it to the rest of your computer. Serial ATA controllers should natively support LBA-48 and very large disks.

(SATA connectors are only about 1cm wide and support one drive per cable; the old-style alternative, IDE/ATA - which some people now call PATA for "Parallel ATA" to differentiate it uses connectors that are about 5.5cm wide, and support either one or two drives per cable - it's easy to tell them apart)

Sorry I didn't mention this earlier, but I was guessing that as how SP1 also introduced the possibility of installation onto SATA disks without third-party drivers, I'd reckoned that you either already had it or weren't using XP.

If you're not using XP, it's not necessary to get it to solve your problem. Check out http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/capacity/137/index.html before you do anything that expensive.
Gadget

snappieT

From this perspective, snapscan1212p (despite being named after a f**king awful parallel-port Agfa scanner, if I remember correctly? ) is right.

Thank you, though my calculations seem to have been wrong.

And for the record, I now own a Canon LiDE 50 scanner. I was just lazy at remembering names when I started on computers, and that username stuck.

Fazer6

Inspector Gadget, the HD is an IDE for sure, all the cables attached to it are exactly as you have described.

Fazer6.

unkel

Inspector Gadget wrote:

Unkel: What I've read on the subject suggests that XP SP1 or later can employ LBA-48 addressing, but only if the hardware actually supports it?

True. The Asrock has at least the VIA 400 chipset iirc, which is more than new enough for LBA-48. Fazer6 kind of indicates he hasn't installed SP1 yet, so this is probably the cause of the issue

160GB drives indeed are 149GB - have two myself

Fazer6, let us know how you get on after SP1 install (why not go SP2?). If it didn't work, you can force LBA-48 support through a registry hack as well

Inspector Gadget

unkel wrote:

True. The Asrock has at least the VIA 400 chipset iirc, which is more than new enough for LBA-48. Fazer6 kind of indicates he hasn't installed SP1 yet, so this is probably the cause of the issue

160GB drives indeed are 149GB - have two myself

A KT400/400A should indeed be fine in the hardware department. I suppose since the ASRock brand is relatively new (Asus's budget arm, isn't it?) it's no surprise the chipsets it uses are recent(ish).

I think I'd better bow out of this now and leave it to those who use XP on a regular basis, as I don't... I will say, however, that I don't understand why you're not keeping your XP system fully patched, considering how many exploits target it...

Anyhoo, happy hunting...
Gadget

Fazer6

I've loaded Win XP SP1 onto the PC, still no joy. Win XP still thinks that I've got a 135 Gig HD. However, this morning, I got some information from a work colleague regarding the problem. It appears to be that because I changed Win XP discs during the formatting process ( Win XP original disk to Win XP SP1 disk ). The original Win XP disk had already decided what hardware configuration was in the PC and the HD disk formatting was under way when I changed disks, the HD was formatted as 135 Gig in size. (See click here ) This tells you that Win XP original did not support HDs over 137 Gig (My problem) and also offers an solution by enabling 48 bit LBA support by modifying a registery entry ( as unkel has already suggested ).
I've also noticed that the BIOS thinks I've got a 160 Gig HD installed, so the solution points towards enabling 48 bit LBA support in software.
Time permitting, I'll try this tonight. If not it will be tomorrow night, but I'll post an answer regardless.... watch this space.

Fazer6.

Inspector Gadget

Fazer6:

I'm not sure if there are any free tools out there that will allow you to resize the existing 130-GB-odd partition to fill the drive (like, say, Partition Magic does); even if/when XP recognises the full size of your disk, you'll be looking at what it sees as a 149GB disk with a 135GB partition of it (i.e. ~14GB sitting unused). You'll either have to find something to stretch your existing partition (as I mentioned above) or re-install, remove the existing partition in Windows Setup, and create a new partition that fills the disk properly.

Good luck with it...
Gadget

Chalk

go to control panel , administartive tools, computer management.

youll see your c drive with 135gig partition and 14gigs unpartitioned
right click and selct format on the unpartitioned space.

Fazer6

Inspector Gadget,

I looked at the Microsoft Knowledge Base item 303013 and followed the directions, no joy. I couldn't find the variable in the registry they spoke about, for large block enable. I followed your link to the Seagate website and downloaded ( today ) two utility programs that I will try over the weekend. Stay tuned for next week's thrilling episode !

Fazer6.

Spunj

I've had this problem before in 2k and XP. It's as simple as editing one registry key to fix,as long as your MB supports LBA.

Have a gander at this article which also links to a fix for non SP installs, the registry entry to add/edit is under step 3 on the page.
http://www.largeharddrivesupport.windowsreinstall.com/winxp.htm

Note: The article says to edit the registry key called 'EnableBigLba'. If it does not exist in the stated place, you have to manually add the key (Add DWORD value).

See also here: http://www.winguides.com/registry/display.php/1115/.

As always, be very very careful when making changes to your registry!

Fazer6

Thanks spunj,

A Steve Martin fan perhaps ???

My BIOS thinks that the HD is a 160 Gig, Windows XP SP1 thinks that the HD is 137 Gig. :rolleyes:

Fazer6.

RicardoSmith

I had to install the intel chipset drivers sometimes to see large drives in XP.

Fazer6

I'm in business !!! I followed the advice of Spunj and Chalk. I edited the registry and also formatted the remaining part of the HD. I now have a total of 157 Gig available in the HD.

Thanks to everyone for their help and advice.

Fazer6