Hard disk queries

[Byff]

Running XP with a 40Gb Hard drive.

As I'm doing a bit of video editing, quickly ran out of disk space, so went and bought a 160Gb hard drive and set it up as a slave (d: )

Formatted it ok NTFS or something, but it only see's 48.8gb. I remember something about large disk drives having to be partioned, but I thought XP was cleverer and could manage.

If it needs to be partioned, how the hell do you do it?

[Plotloss]

Check the jumpers at the back of the drive.

It should be set to either master or slave (depending on the IDE channel its on), not clipped, which is probably whats happening from the sounds of things.

[r988]

NTFS should recognise that size.

Is your computer fairly old? I had a problem once with a motherboard that was too old to recognise the full size of a new larger harddisk that was put in as a replacement. Might be worth looking into.

[Zad]

Sometimes the jumper settings on the drive limit the size that the PC can see. It may also be the case that the IDE controller is quite old and cannot "see" large drive sizes. Another possibility is that as you are using the new drive as a slave, the old master drive is incapable of dealing with comparatively large slave drives.

So;

1) Check the option jumpers on the drive are set correctly.
2) Check your motherboard manual to see what the maximum size is that your IDE controller can see (it may need a BIOS update, or possibly a new plug-in card that can handle large drives)
3) Try running the new drive as it's own master on another IDE connector.

Mike

[Byff]

Thanks, need to do some checking. Incidently, the only jumper setting on the back are for master/slave settings and I've positioned it to slave.

[ErnestM]

You need to be running XP SP1 for larger drives IIRC...

ErnestM