I got a new WD 300gb hard drive and installed Windows XP Pro on it. I installed the SP2, and flashed my BIOS to the latest version.

In Windows, it shows my max hard drive space to be 127gb instead of 300gb. I read this thread on this forum already: http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=30861

While I tried everything suggested in it, I still have the problem. In my BIOS setup, it lists my hard drive as WDC3000JB and shows the correct capacity -- 300gb. But in XP it shows 127gb. WTF?

I tried looking at my ATAPI.SYS per the Microsoft knowledge base entry. My ATAPI.SYS version was 5.1.2600.2180, clearly newer than needed.

Specs:
AMD Athlon 3200+
1gb PC3200 DDR
Western Digital SE 300gb EIDE HDD
Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe Motherboard with AwardBIOS Revision 1013 (11/12/04)

Installing SP2 should have set the registry's EnableBigLba entry to enabled - but you might want to check that this is the case.

Are you sure that the whole drive is not recognised or could you just have one 127GB partition with the remainder as unallocated space. Check the layout under Disk Management (RClick MyCompuer and choose Manage to get there).

Oh ****. Yeah, you are right. THe rest is unpartitioned. Is there any way to combine them? How do I get one 300gb partition without like reformatting and reinstalling Windows ?

Thanks for the help!

You will need a third party partitioning utility such as Partition Magic or BootIt-NG (http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootitng.html) that can non-destructively resize a partition.

Any such partitioning manouvres with any software can go wrong so always backup any important data on removable media before you begin.

You don't have to install BootIt-NG onto your hard drive in order to use its partition manager. After you make the floppy or cd from the download you can cancel the hard drive installation and just go into maintenance in order to resize the partition. If you do install to the hard drive (mainly to have a boot manager but also to be able to use the utilities directly from the hard drive) I suggest you DONT use the option to have 6 primary partitions.

Thanks for the help man.

Just to clarify, why didnt Windows XP make one 300gb partition to begin with during install?

Is it because it does not have the ability to see drives larger than 127gb because it was a pre-SP1 install CD?

i.e. Did I do something wrong to cause the 300gb to be formatted as one 127gb partition and the rest unallocated space, or is it inherent to the Windows XP install I was using?

Best guess is that it was pre SP1 and couldn't see more than 127 gig. Its such a specific threshold that I doubt if you did anything "wrong" yourself. If you chose to format "the whole partition" it would have only formatted what it was capable of seeing.

It's your preference of course and you probably have your own reasons for having a single partition - though if it were me I would probably (for a number of reasons) have multiple partitions on the drive; I would certainly keep the OS itself on less than 300 gig (and probably just use 2 to 10 gig for WinXP).

XP installed with SP2 takes up close to 6 gigs even without installing all the cab files to the same partition. I would partition at least 10 gigs (possibly 20 would be safer) just for the OS and a few programs. Then make other partitions for storage.

I put 98SE on 2 gig partitions because with all the updates, it takes just under 1 gig without any programs.

Is there some advantage to having windows on a 20gb partition? The reason I got a 300gb hard drive is so I could have a lot of stuff (games, apps, etc.) installed on one drive. If Windows is on a separate partition from your Program Files folder, is there any issue running applications in Windows XP that are located in the other partition?

For storage I have an older NTFS 120gb hard drive that has no OS. It contains mp3s, CD image files, backups, recorded video, etc.

Putting your OS on a small partition does a few things beneficial.

First, it makes a reinstallation much easier because you don't need to backup huge amounts of data.
Secondly, it speeds up everything because the OS is not weeding through or carrying around all kinds of baggage.

When you install programs many of them ask where you want to install them to. Whenever I get that choice I install them to the folder I downloaded them to or any partition other than the one with my OS. This keeps Windows 'lean and mean' for better performance.

XP installed with SP2 takes up close to 6 gigs
I don't copy that unless there is huge pagefile. My current installation of SP2 plus a raft of programs is 4.5 gig (and that includes a 1.5 gig pagefile).

One other great reason for a small windows partition is so that it is easy (and quick) to make a clone of it (on another partition and/or onto removable media); one can then restore the clone instead of having to reinstall Windows and "everything".

We all do things in our own idiosyncratic ways but I always create a Program Files folder on another partition, say the E: partition. When installing programs it is then very easy to change the custom position from C:/Program Files etc etc by just changing the C to an E; this saves having to browse to the intended location.

P.S. I do save some space by not ever using System Restore - because I use image file clones as already indicated.

Sounds good to me. It never occurred to me to do this. I guess I'll use a 20gb partition. If they do a SP3 the extra room might be needed.

Thanks guys!