Anyone using a >137GB drive when BIOS can't do LBA?

Hello everyone,

I just got a new 250GB HDD (suggested to me by John and Odin from this thread), and while they warned me that my BIOS might not support drives >137GB, I overlooked this critical step in choosing the HDD.

I have done some reading on this and it looks like it may be possible to use the entire hdd in WinXP SP2 (even though my bios reports it as 137GB) if I:

1. Partition and format it on a computer whos BIOS can address all 250GB
2. Partition the C:\ drive (WinXP boot drive) to less than 128GB
3. Ghost the image from my old 60 GB HDD to the C:\ partition created in the above step
4. Place the drive back into my Inspiron 6000 and enjoy C:\ of ~100GB and D:\ of ~150GB

Is anyone else doing this? Will it work, or am I totally full of it?


Thanks,

-z

 

Your computer must be ancient if it doesn't support that. By ancient, I mean something like 8 years old.

Anyway, what you suggest should work just fine, yes.

 

Hi Jalf,

LOL! I thought the same thing... All the newer computers BIOS should be able to handle it, but no! My notebook is only ~2yrs old!:

Dell Inspiron 6000
Intel 915 series chipset
PATA IDE (not sata)
BIOS revision A09 - October 2005 (Newest)
WinXP MCE (SP2)
Old 60GB HDD = HTS726060M9AT
New 250GB HDD = WD2500BEVE

When I plug in the new 250GB drive it only shows 137GB in the BIOS.

So, you think the above will work okay without corrupting anything? What if I decide to run a scandisk?


Thanks,

-z

 

Actually, LBA support wasn't considered standard until fairly recently.

 

Well, I've got one vote for a yes...

Does anyone see anything wrong with this? If it won't work, I'll just return it for a smaller drive.

Thanks again,

-z

 

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Give it a try.

John

 

Any update on this situation?

One thing you can try is to boot up with a Linux live CD and see if linux fdisk can see the full capacity. Linux basically ignores the BIOS in any pc and instead probes the hardware directly. (Windows uses the antiquated method of asking the BIOS "How big is this drive?" instead of just checking for itself).

Really, all the "137 GB limit" in BIOS pertains to is *BOOTING* your computer. That's the only time the BIOS needs to access data on the disk. Once the OS is running, all disk access goes through the OS (and it's associated device drivers) which shouldn't give two ****s about what your BIOS thinks.

While you're in there, use the Linux fdisk to partition the disk assuming the full capacity is visible (I'm betting it will be).

 

no.

only the most recent of computers (the CDs and up) started supported "large" HDs.

 

With 250gb you should be partitioning that beast of a laptop drive anyway as fragmenting will kill you later on. If I were you I would partition it into three drives....Give the OS at least 80gb and the others as you see fit.

1. OS
2. Temp drive
3. Storage drive

Chop that moster drive up and you wont have a problem

 

Well... I wanted to be sure that the solution that I used was robust before posting back and telling everyone that it worked... I just waited a bit too long before reporting back. Sorry.
I hate when I have a problem, find a post where someone else has the same problem, people propose solutions, but you never know if they worked cause the OP disappeared. So, in the name of Karma...

I got this to work by partitioning the drive in half (Less than 137GB) on a machine that can address >137GB and installing Dynamic Drive Overlay from Western Digital's site.

This works beautifully. I've been running this since my last post and have had no problems whatsoever.

There is a list of requirements and disclaimers that I should list here, but I'm not a lawyer, and you don't want to hear about it. Let me just say that if you don't do this right, you may loose your data (duh ).

I do have one question, if anyone can answer it... My HDD light seems to be half lit almost all the time (slightly flickering), then flashes normally when accessing data. Is this normal? Is this something inherent to WD drives?


Thanks for everyone's help!

-F

 

Thanks very much for the feedback.

John

 

Hi, I got the same problem with you on my newly purchased Samsung 160gb in my Sony Z1 laptop.
I've tired the above method, it looks to work fine, but whenever I copy the file to over the 137gb mark, the error message pops up, says the I/O is not accessible.
Can you try to copy some files over to your last divided partition the reach the 137gb point and see if it works?

Thanks!

 

Hi Poky,

What operating system do you have? Your OS must also support >137GB.
If you're using Windows, you need at least WinXP SP1, Win2k SP3 or Vista.

Format then partition, then install Samsung's drive overlay (I used Western Digital's overlay, ‘cause I have a WD HDD).

Testing was the first thing I did. I completely filled the second partition, then rebooted... Since I saw WinXP boot, all was okay & I could put my data on.

Hope this helps,

-z

 

I just purchased a 160GB HD for my ancient Fujitsu laptop and am also effected by the 137gb limit. How do I partition the drive if I do not have access to another laptop that can address>137gb? I have a desktop that can...