28-bit LBA BIOS and 48-bit LBA XP - Can I use my 160GB hard disk safely?

My Notebook is Inspiron 8600 with BIOS A14.

I recently upgraded my notebook with a 160GB hard disk. However in BIOS I
see only 137GB. I know it is because the BIOS is only so-called '28bit' LBA.
The notebook is of 4 years old and there will be no more BIOS update.
When I installed XP (SP2) on this HD, I still saw 160GB in XP. I heard it is
because the driver in XP SP2 (atapi.sys) is 48-bit LBA already so it can
recognize and access all 160GB disk.
But does this mean I can ignore the BIOS limitation and fully utilize 160GB
in XP? I also heard some people with similar HD upgrade suffered data loss
or system destruction because as something in the system doesn't support
48-bit, when writing to disk, it wraps back to first tracks and destroys
MBR, boot sectors etc. But I don't know whether it was because BIOS didn't
support 48-bit.
So my question is, with 28-bit BIOS, can I safely use 160GB disk with XP
Sp2?
I read many articles, including Microsoft ones, that state that besides the
OS 48-bit LBA support, BIOS must also support 48-bit LBA. But I also heard
that, BIOS is only active when booting up the PC, once it passes to OS, it
should be the OS that manages the disk. So, even though in BIOS I see only
137GB, it should not affect OS activities as long as OS supports 48-bit LBA.
So I am a bit confused: As OS can recognize 160GB, why BIOS matters? In what
situation can a 28-bit LBA BIOS destroy a 160GB disk?
I heard that some people say 'as long as the midpoint of the partition falls
below 137GB, the BIOS will be able to boot from that partition' because the
midpoint is where the MFT mirror is stored. But in XP the MFT mirror is
stored at the end of partition?