[LthrnckPA]

Installed a new 160Gb HD a few weeks ago. BIOS says it's 160 Gb, but MY COMPUTER says it's only 127Gb. And then WinXP has some quirky thing going on about every piece of software I try to install (WordPerfect 11, Quicken 2000 & Q Family Lawyer, Roxio 7.0, etc) and reports that the *.cab file is corrupt and stops the installation.

Somebody told me the BIOS on older MBs (mine is an MSI K7T Turbo2 with an AMD Athlon cpu) may not be able to read beyond 130 Gb.

So I'm considering two options here. Try to flash the BIOS with the latest from MSI for my MB. Then I can see if it recognizes all 160Gb.

Or I can reinstall the OS, in the process updating the BIOS, and running Seagate's Disk Mgr program since I'd essentially be wiping the HD.

There is nothing critical on the HD yet. I'd just have to go back and do all of the MS updates and reload all my malware protections again. But hey, the more I do that the better I can explain to someone else how to do it once I'm done in GU.

Any experienced advice out there?

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If you don't have SP1 installed, XP won't recognize such a large hard drive. Flashing the BIOS is not going to help the OS recognize the new hard drive.

Johanna

[Johanna]

If you don't have SP1 installed, XP won't recognize such a large hard drive. Flashing the BIOS is not going to help the OS recognize the new hard drive.

Johanna

[wannabe1]

Hi LthrnckPA...

Johanna is correct. You MoBo BIOS is not going to help you with that particular issue. I'm running a two year old Asus K8N with updated BIOS in the machine I'm on now. I put in a 200 gig drive. BIOS sees it and reports it correctly...Windows reported it as 1 partition (130 gigs) and unpartitioned space (70 gigs). I used Windows Disk Management to format and partition the remaing space into two patitions, installed a virtual machine on one, and use the other to store all my backups.

Just a thought....

wannabe1

[LthrnckPA]

So, wannabe1, you're saying that if I partition the drive into a 40G playground for learning Linux and it's attendant open source stuff, I should still have my other 120G available for WinXp and it's attendant programs? And it should all show up in MY COPMUTER?

[wannabe1]

Yes...that's right. If you want to have some real versatility while you play with linux...or any other operating system, for that matter, Have a look at This Virtual Machine.

[LthrnckPA]

LOL, I'm even more confused now!

I went to DiskMgmt to create that partition. DM shows the drive as 149.05G with 127G in use and about 21G available for the new partition. Doesn't look like it will be too hard, though I'd still like to know what happened to the other 11G or so.

Have to go check out this Virtual Machine thing.

[wannabe1]

That IS a bit odd. Would you post me a screen shot of the Disk Management window?

[LthrnckPA]

And another question arises. Why would you store your backups on the same HD? If it goes down, like my old one, aren't they lost too?

[wannabe1]

If the drive quits spinning, you lose it all. But if you suffer an os corruption, you can format the C: partition and reinstall. Then recover your current settings from the backups. Include all your installed drivers and a recent copy of the registry. I save an ISO Image of my system (weekly) on the "backup drive". Always backup your really important files, documents, photos, etc...on removable media as well as a redundant HDD.

Edited by wannabe1, 27 February 2006 - 09:24 PM.

[LthrnckPA]

hmmm, a screen shot, huh?

give me a hint?

[LthrnckPA]

Might have bumbled my way into this one.....

Attached Thumbnails

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[LthrnckPA]

Wow! Look at the time. I have to go to bed. 400AM comes early. I'll check back tomorrow. Thanks for the info so far.

[wannabe1]

Sorry....

With the Disk Management window as the active window, Press Ctrl and PrtScn keys at the same time. Open Paint (Start > All Programs > Accessories > Paint) and press the Ctrl and V keys together. Save the image as a JPEG (JPG) file and attach it to your post here.

[Johanna]

Wannabe1 (who already is one!) and I use our extra partitions for data storage because usually the hard drive doesn't fail without warning, but I would imagine he has killed XP a few times, like I have, just playing around. I'm not trying to plug my website, but I wrote a bit about doing backups that you might find interesting/helpful. The gist is the methods you use should be proportional to the value of the data.
http://www.johannank.../Backing up.htm

Do you have the XP cd that you used to install XP on this new drive?
Semper Fi
Johanna

[LthrnckPA]

Do you have the XP cd that you used to install XP on this new drive? Yes, I do. In fact, I have two XP CD's, one for my wife's Gateway laptop and one for my component built (not by me yet) PC.


Semper Fi Johanna [color=#006600]You know, I looked, and I mean really looked, but I never saw a jarhead that looked like your avatar.

wannabe1, do I need to resend the screen shot?