24-bit HDD Addressing (HDD > 137GB)

The BIOS needs to support 48-Bit LBA, not 24-bit. The present limit of 137gb is set by the present use of 28-bit LBA. Dell is not about to make a BIOS revicsion for a post production laptop over 3 years old to include 48-bit LBA support.

Thank you for your comment - and of course you are right in that 48-bit LBA support is required to address disks over 137 GB - my apologies.

I will give ejn63's suggestion a try and mark the thread as solved if successful.

Thank you for your comment / suggestion. The OS on the Inspiron is Windows XP SP2, so I suspect big HDD support ist enabled by default, but I will check the EnableBigLba registry key before I proceed, and I hope for no interference problems between the BIOS and the OS, perhaps via ACPI.

I will get back and mark the thread as solved if and when successful.

Further I apologize for being in error: leduke30 is correct of course in his post that 48-bit LBA support, not 24-bit, is required.

Thanks again to both of you.

Sorry for the delay - tried several options which took time but with no luck yet.

The OS (WinXP with SP2) supports 48-bit LBA but, according to Microsoft, BIOS Support for 48-bit LBA is a prerequisite as well (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/303013/de). They also say in this KB Article that setting the EnableBigLBA key in the registry has no effect after installation of SP1, when 48-bit support became default.

A new 250GB HDD loaded with roughly 160GB of information, which for testing purposes was installed in the system, is recognized as 137GB by the latest (A08) BIOS, so I conclude 48-bit LBA is not supported. Entering into DELL's Diagnosis routine returns a "DST Error" (Drive Self Test Error?). When I opt to continue testing and the next level of the diagnosis routine is loaded which allows custom testing, however, the drive passes all tests including self test, confidence tests, S.M.A.R.T. test etc.. When booted from a CD or a USB Stick, all data - also those that were copied to the drive last and are located beyond the 137GB limit, can be addressed, read and written without problem.

When, however, I try to transfer control to the Windows installation on the drive from a bootable USB stick to load the OS from partition(2) of rdisk(0) - which works fine with the original 80GB drive - an error message tells me the drive's hardware configuration is wrong. I suspect this is the result of a flag set by the BIOS POST which also leads to the "DST Error" diagnostic message mentioned.

The paradox situation is that apparently the hardware has no problem working with big drives, only the BIOS has - so the most obvious solution would still be a revised BIOS.

ejn63 said that it was rather unlikely that DELL would provide a BIOS revision for an end-of-life system. Although I admit that would be understandable (to some degree), the system still works fine, has sufficient resources to run XP, and its only drawback for its current use is its limited HDD capacity.

Is anyone out there with an idea what could be done to allow the full use of the drive as a single partition - a professionally-done modification, for instance, to the BIOS image, that would either extend the BIOS' capabilities or limit the extent of the POST, skipping the HDD address range test, or some better workaround than the one I tried?  

A fallback that I would try else would be to establish two partitions - a small one for the OS and installed software, and a second one for data, hoping that the OS could successfully be started from the small partition and was subsequently able to address the rest of the drive.

I agree that the Inspiron 8500/8600/Latitude C800 models are probably lost causes for anything larger than 137gb, as a D600 I tried with would not recognize the 160 gb at full value either, but at least it would boot with the 160gb after installing the Big Drive Enabler, which it would not do before, and yes, W-XP Pro SP2 was the OS and BIOS was the latest version

Microsoft likes to think because of their extensive data base and software history that they have the only game in town. You get an example of that snobbery with drivers which they have not blessed with their stamp of approval message, but install and work just fine

http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=insp_harddrive&message.id=68279&query.id=209385#M68279

Thanks leduke30 for your comment - but for the Inspiron 8500 using the Maxtor Big Drive Enabler is not the solution since the BIOS blocks access to the drive before anything, including the Windows registry, can be loaded.

In addition to that, Microsoft KB article 303013 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/303013/en-us) says - diifferent from other sources that you can find on the internet - that the related registry setting "EnableBigLBA" in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Atapi\Parameters\ is only, and with "mixed results", applicable to pre-SP1 versions of Windows XP. (I did not check this for W2k, though.)

On the D600 laptop, I ran the Big Drive Enabler without the drive installed, so it went into BIOS. I then installed the 160gb and it booted to BIOS just fine, but of course only recognized the drive as 137gb. So in spite of what MS says, it did have some effect.

Finally, I found a solution that works (implemented and tested successfully): Western Digital, under the designation "Dynamic Drive Overlay" (DDO), provides a modification to the Master Boot Record that works with any BIOS which otherwise would not support 48-bit addressing. Further information can be obtained in Western Digital's Knowledge Base under http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1100&p_created=1066941117&p_sid=k4KB*v-i&p_accessibility=0&p_redirect=&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MTEsMTEmcF9wcm9kcz0wJnBfY2F0cz0wJnBfcHY9JnBfY3Y9JnBfc2VhcmNoX3R5cGU9YW5zd2Vycy5zZWFyY2hfZm5sJnBfcGFnZT0xJnBfc2VhcmNoX3RleHQ9RERP&p_li=&p_topview=1 

and

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1224&p_created=1088534211&p_sid=k4KB*v-i&p_accessibility=0&p_redirect=&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MTEsMTEmcF9wcm9kcz0wJnBfY2F0cz0wJnBfcHY9JnBfY3Y9JnBfc2VhcmNoX3R5cGU9YW5zd2Vycy5zZWFyY2hfZm5sJnBfcGFnZT0xJnBfc2VhcmNoX3RleHQ9RERP&p_li=&p_topview=1.

In short, all you have to do is downloading the support software pack "Data Lifeguard Tools", Version 11 or higher (current is 11.2) for DOS, using the download to create a bootable floppy or CD, booting the system with the >137GB HDD installed from that floppy or CD. Then navigate to a utility designated as "Update MBR", select and execute that utility (takes less than a second), exit Data LifeGurad Tools, remove the floppy or CD, and reboot.

This was tested successfully on the Inspiron 8500 with a 250 GB drive, on a HP Pavilion ze5278 with a 160 GB drive, and, just for verification testing purposes, on a "vintage" (1997) desktop with a 350 MHz Pentium 2 and a long out-of-production Asus motherboard, using a current 500 GB drive. I am not sure whether the applicability of this procedure ist limited to Western Digital (WD) drives - in all three cases, the drives were from Western Digital. Using DDO with other brands of HDs may be possible but should only be attempted after a backup copy of the drive's content has been made and verified, and it may well be that other brands do supply similar solutions for their products.

A "caveat" may be advisable with respect to other comments I've read on the web which reported success despite BIOS not supporting 48-bit addressing. It is possible that such a machine seems to work ok with the "big" drive, but it may later fail when the drive is filled with data. With the Inspiron 8500, in my first try I experienced exactly that. I transferred everything from the previous, 80 GB HDD to the 250 GB new drive by copying the two existing partitions (DELL diagnosis FAT and Windows XP NTFS) using a separate machine (oviously one that fully supports 48-bit LBA), then used Windows XP's built-in DiskPart utility to extend the Windows XP NTFS partition to the drive's full capacity. All seemed ok: Despite the fact that the BIOS listed the drive as 137 GB only, the logical C: drive (NTFS partition) showed up with its normal formatted 243 or so GB capacity in Windows XP. However, as soon as data were added to the drive and filled it beyond the 137 GB limit, the system did not start when I attempted to boot again, after a completely normal previous shutdown. The eventual escape from that situation was the installation of WD's DDO, and tests on both the Inspiron and the desktop proved that this worked with the drive(s) filled up to physical limits.

Thanks to everyone who contributed; I consider this case solved - for WD drives at least.