Are you sure the ATA 66 controller card supports drives larger than 137 Gb?

Steve

Since the controller requires BIOS extensions in order to run the hard drive, and since ATA/66 is old technology created before there were hard drives larger than 137 Gb, my guess is that the BIOS extensions for the ATA/66 card do not support large drives.  An ATA/100 controller should work, just make sure it supports drives larger than 137 Gb.

Steve

I have a question:  Does your XPST750r Restart from XP OK?  Mine will say "Operating system not found" after the controller detects the drives.  Normal startup is fine.  I have dual-boot, which differs from yours.  Windows sees less capacity than the claimed capacity of the drive.  My 80GB is seen as 77 about.  I believe you would have to partition to see the whole thing, changing controllers would help.  www.promise.com, www.siig.com, I am thinking of changing controllers for the restart problem.

If I understand your question correctly, the answer is yes.  I have no problem with my system other than not correctly recognizing the true HD size. 

Even before I can partition the HD, the system must recognize the true HD size.  As long as the system states 137 GB, I really cannot do anything beyond this at this moment. 

Before I invest in a new card ($30?), I want to make sure that this will be the solution. 

Thanks, Susumu b

 

http://www.promise.com/marketing/datasheet/file/Ultra133tx2DS_v3.pdf will answer your concerns.  Mentions >137GB support.  That is one board I am considering.  Start/turnoffcomputer menu/restart green button is what gives me trouble with XP.  Must be yours is fine (no dual boot, simpler).  Thanks for replying to a question responding to your question!

Thanks.  It surely says that it support a disk>137GB.  At the same time, nowhere on the web site hints that what I have cannot support a HD larger than 137GB.  

Susumu

I looked at the Ultra 100 model, no mention at all.  The old products were made before such large drives existed. 

Message Edited by JDre on 02-13-2004 08:10 PM

Have you tried 2 - 80 GB partitions?

No, but it may be worth trying.

Now, it appears that I have a bigger problem.  Somehow when I was trying to correct all these by reformatting, somehow the computer recognized my HD as 32 GB now. (As I had to install Windows 98 and use my XP "upgrade" version (still SP1). 

Western Digital support asks me to use Disk Management tool of Windows XP.  It appears that the computer is still recognizing 137GB, but I have only 25GB left.  No other partition to be seen. 

By the way, an ATA 133 card is on the way, so I will try that soon, but where should start? 

Any comments?

 

Do you now have dual boot?  There will be a choice Windows xp or windows if so.  See if you have more than one drive letter.  More help needed from others here...

This is for everyone who may want to know how I resolved this issue:

In short, as some of the respondents aptly recommended, I installed a new Promise ATA 133 card which runs at 33MHz.  After trying everything including BIOS upgrade (From A09 to A11) and confirmed that my Windows XP is Service Pack 1, the only remaining question was: "is my Promise ATA 66 which came with the original configuration able to recognize a hard disk size bigger than 137GB?"  I researched this topic, but there was no clear answer.  I tried to update the driver for the PCI card but I could not find any newer than what Windows XP provided. 

I installed a new Promise Ultra ATA 133 yesterday and followed the instructions very carefully.  I decided to reinstall Windows XP, but you probably do not have to.  Windows XP Set Up menus immediately recognizes the correct size of the hard disk.  I deleted the primary partition and combined the total space to one.  Everything else was smooth sailing after that. 

I tend to believe that the performance of my computer is a bit better and faster, but I cannot tell as I have not tried with data-intensive applications yet.

So, if anybody has a disk size problem with ATA66, maybe the easiest solution would be replace it with an ATA 133.  it was around $35 dollars online. 

Thanks everybody.

 

 

Glad you solved it.  I am actually glad I did NOT get a 160GB drive, because of that 137GB limit on my existing Promise controller.  Enjoy your upgrade.