137gb barrier

[TheMajor]

Cant you just install Xp with SP1 on it and after installing, then go to the MS update web page and install SP2 then it will reconize your full drive.

And you can use something like partation magic to slam them back together again and make one large partation?

Both SP1a and SP2 enable 48 bit LBA. Yes, you can use Partition Magic to merge partitions.

 

[takezo3001]

I just went into Administrative Tools>Computer management>Disk management, and formatted the HDD, added my partitions, and was completely set! Win 2Kpro SP4!
EDIT: BTW: My HDD's a Maxtor 300gb!

 

[Aspirin]

This is a sweet thread. Good practical solutions. I met one hardware guy already that just loaded on the OS to whatever size it recognized and then resized the partition afterwards to take the rest of the hard drive.. lol. He was a crazy guy.

 

[Snake-Eyes]

FAQ
Q: Why is it called the 137gb barrier when the drive is shown as 127gb in windows?
A: 137GB refers to the metric number of bytes (as do hard drive manufacturers) in which the prefixes kilo, mega, giga etc are rounded to a multiple of 10. kilo being 1000, mega 1000000 and giga 1000000000. however computers operate in binary so the definition of these prefixes has been changed to fit the difference in numbers. for instance a kilobyte is actually 1024 bytes not 1000 bytes. therefore a megabyte is 1024x1024 and a gigabyte 1024x1024x1024 etc, binary quantities of bytes use an "i" in the suffix eg: MB vs. MiB and GB vs. GiB. so if the number 137,000,000,000 is taken (137gb) and divided by the number of bytes in 1 GiB (1,073,741,824 bytes) the number 127.59 results. hence 137GB=127GiB.

Just some nitpicking, it's actually 1 byte equals 8 bits. The "binary KiB/MiB/GiB" are called bits. Again, just me nitpicking.

 

[Burnselk]

have you already formatted the hdd? what sort of hardware are you using.

I installed the WD 250GB HDD using the WD software....I suppose it contained the formatting instructions....I took no formatting action of my own. I wouldn't know how to format a new HDD anyway.

i need to know whether the hdd is SATA or IDE and your motherboard/controller card if you are using one

The new drive is a WD IDE HDD.....and I don't know what you mean by mobo/controller card....so lets assume I'm not using one.

Hope this enables you to help me.

P.S. I already have several GB of data on the new HDD. Will this be lost if I do a partition now?

 

[Nitestick]

wow somehow in the original guide it seems i failed to mention resizing the partition as an option. it is relatively easy to do this using a program such as BootItNG or Partition Magic. i am posting this because apparently there is now a 24 hour edit timeout on posts and i couldn't add it to the first post

 

[TheMajor]

You would still only have 137GB, though.

 

[Nitestick]

that would be if you didn't meet the hardware requirements or software requirements though. if you later installed SP1 or SP2 you could resize the partition although i haven't tried myself.

 

[Burnselk]

that would be if you didn't meet the hardware requirements or software requirements though. if you later installed SP1 or SP2 you could resize the partition although i haven't tried myself.

If you already have several GB of data saved to the drive that you intend to partition, would you lose any of the data?

I'd like to partition my 250GB HDD into three partitions; 100GB, 100GB; and 50GB for my system backup.....or something similar.

And I'd like to use both 100GB partitions for photos and videos that I've downloaded/saved. I can delete the downloaded video once I've burned it to DVD.

 

[Nitestick]

with partition magic it shouldn't be much trouble to split and resize partitions, there should be no data loss