Hey all,

I just put together a little system here surprisingly fired right up first shot no issues, (did I mention surprisingly?) hehe.

Anyways here is a quick rundown of the parts

Antec 900 case
Abit IP35 Pro motherboard
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz
Thermaltake W0106RU - 700 watt toughpower PS
Corsair 4GB (2 x 2GB sticks) DDR2 800 Ram (reads as 3.5 gig since I am using xp pro 32 bit) I knew this going in tho...
1 Seagate Barracuda 250GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s
1 Seagate Barracuda 750GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s
DVD Burer Samsung 20X DVD±R DVD Burner with LightScribe
2 - MSI NX8600GT-T2D256EZ GeForce 8600GT 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Cards
(so I can run 4 dvi monitors at once)
OS XP Pro 32 bit

XP CD booted up fine, found the 2 HD's but both show as only aprox 132 gig. I googled it and seemed to find I need sp2 to be able to get the full hard drives to be recognized.

My question is about installation, how can I get windows to recognize this 250 drive at the initial install of xp (so I don't lose all that space) on the main 250 drive without having sp2?

It's sort of a catch 22, I can't get xp to recongize full drive size without sp2 but I can't prep the drive for the install xp without losing about half of the drives capacity since I don't have sp2 and it won't see the full drive size....

If I do just format the 250 drive as it shows it (132ish) after I do the sp2 update, will it see my full primary 250 drive and expand its site to show as 250 as one drive or will I have to partition (as a C,D type thing) to get the rest of the 250 back - if thats even possible?

I won't even mess with the 750 drive till after I do sp2, but after sp2 will it see the whole 750 drive even?

Surprised how well it all went together this is my only real snag, I guess in the past I never had a drive over 80 G so I never realized there would be issues like this with larger drives but I am learning as I go - ughh..

Bill

You could make a "slipstream" XP SP2 disk.

You do this by putting your current CD plus SP2 on your hard drive then use a "slipstreaming" program to merge the two on a new disk.

NLite is the most common software and it is free:

http://www.msfn.org/articles.php?act...showarticle=49


Otherwise you do not lose the hard drive space. You just need to add the rest as a different partition.

In Disk Management you will see the rest of the drive as Unallocated Space.

Right click the Unallocated Space and choose Format... NTFS.

You now have a new partition and use of the whole drive.

Disk Management is via: right click My Computer then click Manage then Disk Management.

I havent messed with that slipstream stuff but if nothing else i will have aprox a 130 gig for the primary C and just make a new partition of the rest of that drive i guess, (wont be the end of the world), then ill make sure to do sp2 of course before trying to install find and format that 750 gig drive,

With sp2 are there any size limits at that point? (will it see my full 750 after i do sp2 on xp)?

I am just surprised how well everything went except for that one small snag...

Bill

There is no limit.

The original XP was directed to only format 137GB because in the year 2000 no one considered larger hard drives on PCs as they didn't exist at the time.

There is no reason for a larger partition for the Operating System and by using other partitions you avoid the data loss or need to transfer in case of the need to reinstall XP.

You could also use a partition tool to merge the partitions if you absolutely wanted to.

GParted is free and fairly easy to use:

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/

Glad all went well. Building is fun!

I have 2 other small issues on this build,

FIRST
In the Antec 900 case there are 2 front panel audio jacks, guessing mic and headphones?
There is a lead that comes down in the case to go to the motherboard that has 2 connectors one says AC97, one says HDaudio, the antec book warns not to connect this to the wrong interface on the motherboard or it may cause damage.

The motherboard is an abit IP35 PRO, and I am using the onboard audio, in the specs on newegg for this motherboard it says HDA for audio chipset, so do I connect the HD Audio lead (from the case) to the FP audio jack on the motherboard?

I just didnt want to mess anything up...but it appears you could use either the ac97 or hda plug from the front panel of the antec 900 to get those 2 front jacks working just depended on what audio chipset the motherboard uses?

SECOND,
On the cdrom/dvd burner I bought I dont see any sort of audio connector,

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827151154

this is my first messing with sata dvd burners, does the sata cable carry audio too? (like hdmi does for tvs?).
Just very odd for a dvd burner cdrom drive to not have audio output on the backside, i do see and have the jack on the motherboard, I haven't put speakers on the system yet due to that whole front panel issue mentioned above (afraid to mess something up) so I havent stuck a dvd in yet to test, but guessing (from past pcs) that I would need a audio cord from cdrom drive to motherboard like all previous computers I had have, unless of course sata carries the sound too?

Bill

If the motherboard supports HDA use HDA.

The only issue that I have seen with HDA is getting the right driver.

But the first step is make the connection.

Audio outputs on DVD/CD drives are an optional accessory. They are not necessary and if the drive has no port then obviously not an option. This applies to either IDE/ATA or SATA.