HD issue on Dell Dimension (possibly driver issue with Ultra100TX2 controller?)

Question

Hello,   I have a Dell Dimension 8100.   I have 4 Hard Drives installed.  Recently my C: drive crashed, so I installed a new drive and re-installed WindowsXP.   I also updated the system BIOS at the same time (had A02, now have A09)     Since then, I have a problem with my 4th drive, which is a WD 200GB drive.   My Ultra100TX2 controller card sees the drive correct (as 186GB, which is correct for a 200GB drive)   However, WindowsXP sees only a capacity of 127GB.   I double checked in the Computer Management - Hard Drives control panel and there is no other partition listed for this drive.     I had a partition that showed up before in WindowsXP before I installed the new C: drive,  now I only see the first partition (or 127GB) and I have no idea what happened to my other drive letter (partition) which I assume is the remaining GB's on this drive that I cannot see.   I think the BIOS is working OK because it lists this drive as 186GB.  But I don't know what to do in WindowsXP to get it working properly.   In Device Manager, both Promise cards show up under SCSI controllers (no !'s there either).   I went to Promise's web site and downloaded the latest drivers for my Ultra100TX2 controller, but I can't figure out how to install them, there is no setup.exe file.  Just an .inf and .sys file.  I right-clicked on the .inf file and selected 'install',  but the sys file in the Windows/System32/Drivers folder still seems to have the old date.   Is there some other way to update the drivers?  Will this even help?   I checked on the Dell Support site to see if there is any software or drivers I should download, but in Device Manager everything seems OK except for 2 items under 'Other Devices', which are:   ?  -Universal Serial Bus (USB) Controller ?  -Unsupported Device   Those are the only items with '?' listed.  Perhaps the unsupported device is related to this problem, but I just don't know.   Any ideas?     Thanks in advance, Nathalie

ejn63 · Answer

You must install Service Pack 2 for XP and enable large drive support.

http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/faq/137_winxp.html

Also make sure to do all post-SP2 updates for XP - or else you're a sitting duck for malware.

ejn63 · Answer

Did you follow the instructions I linked from Seagate to enable large drive support? It does not enable itself by default.

nathaliev · Answer

Thanks for the suggestion, I ran Windows Update and downloaded Service Pack 2, but unfortunately it didn't solve the problem.

The drive still shows up as 127GB (should show 186GB)

Please let me know if you can suggest anything else. I'm really at a loss here.

Thanks
Nathalie

nathaliev · Answer

Thanks,

I'm not sure my data is worth that much, it's just a time consuming task to recreate some of what I had there.

That said, what would you recommend for me to get that drive working as a 200GB drive, should I reformat through Disk Manager?

Thanks

Nathalie

ejn63 · Answer

When you were trying to solve this problem, before you installed SP2 and enabled large drive support, did you at any point open the disc manager and allow it to write a signature file to the drive in question?

nathaliev · Answer

Thanks,

I have a Western Digital drive, so I ran the Reg48bitLBA utility and it enabled 48 bit. I restarted and still my drive shows up as only 127GB :(

I tried Seagate's DiscWizard but it won't recognize my drives because they are not SCSI and not Seagate.

Short of throwing my computer out the window I don't know what else to do.

Nathalie

ejn63 · Answer

Two scenarios:

If the drive was originally partitioned with a disc manager, which was removed on reinstall of the boot drive, then reinstalling that disc management software overlay may work.

However, once you opened the WINDOWS disc management without the overlay (or without large drive support enabled), Windows wrote a signature to the drive, corrupting it.

In either case, if the data is valuable, I'd not fool around with it - contact a data recovery service and explain the situation. It will cost you a minimum of a few hundred dollars to get the data recovered, but at this point, I'd say it's the only safe option - you're not going to get the data back without professional assistance.

nathaliev · Answer

Hi,   I don't know...   In Disk Manager,  I didn't do anything inside there to that drive except just look at the settings.   I reformatted one of the other drives through Disk Manager, but didn't touch this one at all.     I have data on that drive (and on the missing partition, which is why I'm deparate to get it recognize the entire drive, in hopes I can recover that data), so I wouldn't have done anything (on purpose anyway) in Disk Manager to it.   Nathalie

ejn63 · Answer

Do not use a disc manager. Now that large drive support is enabled, if you delete the existing partition and repartition, you should be able to create a single large partition.

YOu will lose everything on the drive in doing this however.

nathaliev · Answer

Thanks, I will try one last thing first, which is installing that HD in my other computer that already has a 200GB drive just to see if by some miracle it sees this missing partition.   BTW - do you think using something Partition Magic may enable me to see that missing partition by any chance?     Nathalie

Storage, Drives & Media

HD issue on Dell Dimension (possibly driver issue with Ultra100TX2 controller?)

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