300 GB HD Issue

[fatali]

A friend of mine just got a new 300GB HD with 48 bit addressing. His problem is that he can't get Win 2000 to recognize anything past 137GB.  Is there anyway he can get it to recognize the full 300GB and make it usable?

[Dilbert]

Same thing happened to me with my 200 GB hdd. I'm 100% sure that the motherboard does not support such a large-capacity drive. He would need to upgrade it. See, these older motherboards just aren't made to handle this. I'm sorry.

Even worse is this: If he upgrades the motherboard to something that will support his hard drive, he'll need to format it to see all 300 GB unless he has something like PartitionMagic. If he doesn't, make sure he backs up whatever's on his hard drive before he formats.

I'm positive on this. It happened to me, and the tech support guys told me exactly this.

[fatali]

He just got a new board with the drive it's a asus p5wd2-e premium Motherboard

[Dilbert]

Okay, it's new. But that doesn't mean it's new on the market. How long has that motherboard been around? Is it the latest and greatest, or is it cheap? If your friend went for cheap, it may not support that big a drive.

[fatali]

It's not a cheap board I can assure you.    

SpecificationsModel
Brand ASUS
Model P5WD2-E Premium
Supported CPU
CPU Socket Type Socket T (LGA 775)
CPU Type Intel Pentium EE/Pentium D/Pentium 4 HT
FSB 1066/800MHz
Supported CPU Technologies Hyper-Threading Technology

Chipsets
North Bridge Intel 975X
South Bridge Intel ICH7R

Memory
Number of DDR2 Slots 4x 240pin DDR2
DDR2 Standard DDR2 800
Maximum Memory Supported 8GB
Dual Channel Supported Yes

Expansion Slots
AGP Slots None
PCI Express x16 2
PCI Express x1 1
PCI Slots 3
Other Slots 1 x Universal PCI-E (max. x2 speed)
Storage Devices
PATA 2 x ATA100 up to 4 Devices
SATA II 8
SATA RAID RAID 0/1/0+1/5 Matrix RAID
Additional RAID Controller Marvell 88SE6141
Onboard Video
Onboard Video No
Onboard Audio
Audio Chipset Realtek ALC882M
Audio Channels 8 Channels
Onboard LAN
LAN Chipset Marvell 88E8053
Second LAN Chipset Marvell 88E8053
Max LAN Speed Dual 10/100/1000Mbps
Rear Panel Ports
PS/2 2
LPT 1
USB 4x USB 2.0
S/PDIF Out 1x Optical and 1x Coaxial
Audio Ports 6 Ports
Onboard USB
Onboard USB 4x USB 2.0
Onboard 1394
Onboard 1394 2x 1394a
Physical Spec
Form Factor ATX
Dimensions 12.0" x 9.6"

Features
Power Pin 24 Pin
Features 1 x External Serial ATA 3.0Gb/s
The SATA_RAID4 connector and External SATA port can not be used simultaneously


Specs from newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131589

[fatali]

Well, I think I may have found a solution for him. Turns out with Win2k, anything earlier than SP3 doesn't support 48bit addressing. Just have to wait to tell him to try updating his windows.

[Dilbert]

Okay, it's not old, and not cheap. BUT... this does not mean it is capable of running a hard drive larger than 137 GB. I did a little reseach on Google and found that others have the same problem with this EXACT motherboard. It's because it uses what's called 28-bit addressing. To be honest, I have no idea what that is, but it limits the amount of space you can have.

A poster on another forum who was having a problem wrote:

I'm installing a new 200 Gbyte Seagate hard drive in a Windows XP SP2 PC
with an MSI K8T Neo series MB. The guide from Seagate warns about the 137
Gbyte addressing limitation of some Operating Systems and of some Mother
Boards. The OS should be OK but I can't seem to find anything in the
motherboard documentation that specifically mentions this limitation so I am
unsure of whether I can safely partition the drive to more than 137 Gbytes.

I did do a little research and this is what I came up with. According to
the Seagate guide, the 137 Gbyte limit is a result of not being capable of
48 bit addressing. I found a discussion of this issue on the Seagate site
http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/tp/137gb.pdf which explains that the
limit can be determined by the number of addressable bits. Using their
calculations, 28 bit addressing yields 137 Gbytes ( 28 base 2 x 512 Bytes)
and the newer 48 bit addressing yields 144 Petabytes.

The guide for the Motherboard states under the heading "Hard Disk
Connectors: IDE1 & IDE2" that " The mainboard has a 32-bit Enhanced PCI IDE
and Ultra DMA 66/100/133 controller that that provides PIO mode 0~5, Bus
Master, and Ultra DMA 66/100/133 function." I'm assuming that the 32-bit
refers to the addressable bits (Enhanced over the 28-bit ?) which, using the
calculations above, would yield about 2.2 Terabytes.

I would conclude that my MB is capable of working with partitions of more
than 137 Gbytes using the IDE connectors on the MB or have I gone astray?

Thanks

It's not the same motherboard, but the info is good. I advise that you read the thread:

http://howtofixcomputers.com/bb/sutra852132.html

[edit]Whoops, we posted at about the same time. [/edit]

[fatali]

Every OS by Microsoft is incapable of using more than 504 MiB (Yes, MiB. MiB is Mebibyte. Google it if you need to know more) unless LBA mode is enabled.  Logical Block Addressing overcomes the 504 MiB limit by using some very nice changes to the logical geometry of the drive to sort of 'trick' your system into reading the full size of your Hdd.  The bit addressing, for the guy in the post you found: 28 bits, and for my friend: 48 bits, has to do with the LBA.


(Went looking for this after I figured out what I was looking for lol )


For anyone who wants to know, info about LBA: http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/bios/modesLBA-c.html

[Dilbert]

I found MiB on Wiki. Sounds like Megabyte with a cold.

Seriously, I find this highly interesting, but I think I'd prefer the system of mega, giga, tera, and so on. It's what I grew up with, kinda like growing up with the American measurement system. Thanks for the info.

[fatali]

Me too, I like using mega, giga, tera.  When I read about the Mib and Gib, I realized that that is why, for instance, when you install a '40' GB Hdd, it only shows up as somewhere around 38GB when you view it in the OS, it's because of the two different measurments. One's using the Giga, one's using the Giba, it just doesn't tell you that. lol

[Dilbert]

Yeah, I noticed that my 200 GB hard drive (as I said, I had to upgrade my own motherboard for this reason) shows up as 189 GB total. It's like, "Hey, I paid for 200 GB!" lol

[fatali]

lol, well technicaly you did get what you paid for. It's still the same about, just two different ways of measuring it.   A gibibyte has over 73 million more bytes than a gigabyte.  So, the size written on the disk and advertised by the company is really in Gib, and the size that shows up in the OS is in Gig.

[Dilbert]

This is enough to make any techhie's head hurt. Ah, well. I guess they like it confusing. Keeps them in business.

[fatali]

lol, I had to re-read to make sure I got it right.  The reason for the two types of measuremeant is that one is in Decimal (Gig) and one is Binary (Gib). But, I wish they would pick one and stick to it accross the board.

[GX1_Man]

But I think the full drive can be used as is, just not as one big partition.

[fatali]

I believe he has tried using multiple partitions, but he's not online and I don't have his phone number to find out.

[Backdated]

As far as 48 bit transfer is concerned, it's really quite easy to understand if kept simple. It's the "address width" in bits of the data bus.
Much more data can be simultaneously transferred over a 32 bit wide bus than across a 16 bit wide bus.
It is a fair bit more involved than this but think of the difference in traffic moving capability of a narrow country road and an 8 lane motorway.

[GX1_Man]

I believe he has tried using multiple partitions, but he's not online and I don't have his phone number to find out.

Maybe your friend should post his questions.  

[fatali]

He doesn't usualy check out help forums, I just thought I'd try to help him out.  

Just spoke to him, he got it working.

[GX1_Man]

Just out of curiosity how did the situation resolve?

[fatali]

Had to do some registry editing.   2000 doesn't have EnableBigLBA  enabled by default so, after getting SP4  you have to go into the registry and change the value of EnableBigLBA to 1.

This is what I had found: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305098/en-us  


He did the same thing, except he found some software that came with a Hdd that did the registry editing for him.