Hi Folks,
Apologies in advance for the long post, but it's necessary.
I've just upgraded to XP Pro from Win98SE.
I run a dual boot with one for Internet and general stuff and one for Video Editing only.
My current file system is FAT32.
I have four hard drives in my system, 2x120GB, 1x160Gb and 1x250Gb.
When I was on Win98 I had to partition the 160 and 250 GB drives to be no more than 137GB, because Win98 couldn't hack anything any bigger.
I use a Promise Ultra TX100 card to interface the drives to the mobo as it's only a 66MHz and the card has LBA set and XP drivers and shows the four hard drives as 2x111Gb, 1x149GB and 1x232GB so they are certainly recognised as full size from the BIOS and controller card.
Having gone to XP Pro I repartitioned the two big drives to full size to make use of the extra space. I added a partition to the 160GB and I reformatted the large drive to a new 250Gb NTFS partition.
Having transferred about 128GB of data and video to it I started getting problems:
Scandisk failures, lost fragments, cross-linked files, run chkdsk comments.
So I ran chkdsk on both of the new partitions.
It came up with screenloads of errors, said it couldn't fix them all.
When I went back to "My Computer" the two partitions had disappeared!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
When I used Disk Mgr or Partition Magic, they showed up as "Not Formatted".
Yesterday, I did the complete exercise again with the same result.
Today, I have deleted the partition on the 160GB that takes it over 137 and I've reformatted the 250Gb to be 137.
Everything seems to be OK again.
I'm just about back to what I had on Win98 except I've now got an NTFS partition.
SOOOOOO.......It seems that my system cannot cope with any HDD over 137GB, but WinXP Pro SP2 is supposed to have native support for this, so what's happening??
Have I missed something basic, like do I have to "turn it on" and if so where isa it please?
This simple upgrade has gone from bad to worse to a nightmare!
I thought I was being good by backing up absolutely everything to a completely different drive. The last thing I ever expected to happen was for it to disappear.
Any ideas and suggestions gratefully received.
Regards.

Just in case it's not clear from the above, both my systems in the dual boot are WinXP Pro.
Regards.

I have no answers but will post a "what I would do" post

First off XP SP2 NTFS should have no drive size limitations.

I see no reason to have two versions of XP on the same computer. Dual booting is usually used for two different Operating Systems. This could, (although I cannot explain it), be causing a lot of conflicts across the drives. I also have never seen a reason for partitioning hard drives. Of course this is just me

That being said what I would do is start from scratch and Clean Install XP onto one hard drive as NTFS on a single partition. I would then reformat the other three drives and setup as NTFS single partitions. You may also need to use the particular manufacturers software in order to install these drives to their maximum potential.


If this should still offer problems I would question the Controller Card. Even tho it detects the drives it might be having issues dealing with these sizes. One way to test this is just try two drives on the on-board Primary channel or even at least put the XP drive on the on-board Master.


You might also check your DMA settings:

DMA Mode for ATA/ATAPI Devices in Windows XP


One other idea would be to load the latest BIOS for your motherboard.




Hope this helps.

.

Hi Jephree,
Many thanks for your continued interest and suggestions.
All sounds like good logical stuff.
We can have a long discussion about multiple OS's and partitions at another time, but suffice to say that for video editing and DVD writing at high speeds, it's necessary on my humble pc to ensure that no background tasks cut in during DVD creation, for example, or glitches occur so a separate system with no virus check, screen saver, etc. is essential.

I had already thought of putting a couple of drives back on the primary IDE channel, but my mobo is only 66MHz and my drives are 100 so it would slow my system down, but it would eliminate the controller card.

Anyway, I've just been reading about this thing called "EnablebigLBA" which is apparently in the Registry.
I assumed that this would get set automatically when an XP system is created or at least when you install service pack2?
BUT, I know it's not set on my system because I can't address anything over 137GB (127GB) at least without getting major issues.
So, what is this registry entry please?
How can I check if it's on or off please?
This could explain all my problems.
Best Regards.

Originally Posted by jephree

I have no answers but will post a "what I would do" post

First off XP SP2 NTFS should have no drive size limitations.

I see no reason to have two versions of XP on the same computer. Dual booting is usually used for two different Operating Systems. This could, (although I cannot explain it), be causing a lot of conflicts across the drives. I also have never seen a reason for partitioning hard drives. Of course this is just me

That being said what I would do is start from scratch and Clean Install XP onto one hard drive as NTFS on a single partition. I would then reformat the other three drives and setup as NTFS single partitions. You may also need to use the particular manufacturers software in order to install these drives to their maximum potential.


If this should still offer problems I would question the Controller Card. Even tho it detects the drives it might be having issues dealing with these sizes. One way to test this is just try two drives on the on-board Primary channel or even at least put the XP drive on the on-board Master.


You might also check your DMA settings:

DMA Mode for ATA/ATAPI Devices in Windows XP


One other idea would be to load the latest BIOS for your motherboard.




Hope this helps.

.

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=303013

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...BA&btnG=Search

There are also some Hard Drive manufacturers' specific tools such as Seagate:

http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/di...7_win2000.html

Hi Jephree,
Thanks for the update and links.
I've just downloaded the Seagate tool and bigLBA wasn't set in either of my systems.

It's interesting that the MS article says bigLBA is enabled by default in SP1.
I have WinXP Pro SP2 and it isn't.
I can understand it for the instal that was an upgrade from Win98SE but not for the one that was a clean install.
My upgrade was a retail pack of XP Pro with SP2, bought recently, nothing cheap or illegal, so I'm mortified that it's given me all these problems

As I said bigLBA wasn't on in either??? Now I'd like to know why?

Now all I have to do is format the extra space and this time it should all work (hopefully...)
Many Thanks.

Originally Posted by jephree

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=303013

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...BA&btnG=Search

There are also some Hard Drive manufacturers' specific tools such as Seagate:

http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/di...7_win2000.html