large hard drives

[fideleus]

if you have an old mobo that doesnt support larger hard drives (ie no more than 8gigs) and want to get a new drive, there is software that lets you go around that, right? are there any such software that is recommended?

[mjc]

Yes, the specific drive overlay that the drive manufacturer has for that drive....

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mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

[Stevie Blunder]

I'd recomend a BIOS upgrade that supports INT-13 extensions. You should know that before NT4 sp4, the NT4 could not handle 8g+ drives, and, even SP5, SP6 can not load the OS form 8G+. You have to use ntldr (and maybe NTdetect.com) from W2K in order to boot to a partition past 8G.

Cheers,
Steve

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You don't learn much when you do it right the first time.

[iisbob]

Use the drive overlay software as mjc pointed out, if you flash the BIOS on this system ( even if an upgrade is available ) you run the rick of causing more issues than simply having it not recognize a larger hard disk.

Stevie Blunder NT will recognize natively drive sizes larger than 8GB, however the safe limitation is to stay under 8GB ( using native NTFS ) the reason for the original 4GB limitation is that original NT formats in FAT first, then converts to NTFS, even if you chose NTFS by default. This is where the limitation of the Interrupt 13 plays a part-current systems will more than adequately handle NT 4.0 on 8GB > greater partition sizes.


Visit here, NT limnits (http://www.2cpu.com/Files/4GBSystem.pdf) for some more info.


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iisbob

There is no such thing as a stupid question; just an improper one.-my own belief

[Stevie Blunder]

Bob, you want to check:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q197667

for the staight dope. I notice you didn't mention which Service Pack you were talking about. It matters! The basic problem is that the original NT installation CD does not support large drives. This came later with SP4. Maybe you could buy a later NT install disk, ie included SP4+, but I've not seen any.

And I discovered through personal experience that even with SP6 and a new atapi.sys that handles large drives, if you put a copy of NT in a partition above 8G, the old ntldr can not see it, and I don't think it gets upgraded with SP4,5, or even SP6. This is only a problem in multi-boot systems because normally the OS lives in the first part of the first partition.

BTW, Yes, I think you CAN mess with the clusters to get 4G with fat16, but fat16 is normally limited to 2G.




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You don't learn much when you do it right the first time.

[iisbob]

Even original NT ( with out sp4 ) will support 8GB drives in ntfs just fine; { actually the limit is closer to 7.84 GB's } and for larger than 8GB you have to use spanning or mirroring. I did not mean to emply that NT ( no matter what service pack you have ) will handle drives larger than 8GB natively without some help.

Just out of curiosity, why did you bring up NT at all? The original post had/has nothing to do with NT that i can see at all.

I've been an NT admin for nearly 8 years now, believe me-i know all about NT's hangups and irksome traits! When 2k server first debuted i was estatic, finally! some in depth services control ( not too mention the handy device manager ) http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

Tho i will say that i miss the old standard permission setup-2k's " port " of Novell's NDS ( ADS in 2k ) and resulting permission tree setup can be downright aggravating at times, and i never was ( nor am i now ) a netware fan, tho novell has it's puses-my fondest memories of novell were when i migrated it to an NT server. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif



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iisbob

There is no such thing as a stupid question; just an improper one.-my own belief

[Stevie Blunder]

It was just another potential problem with the 8G limit. These days a 20G drives is considered small. I wouldn't mess with a soft patch; fix the BIOS, if that's the problem.

This is the other bit:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q224526

There are enough new bugs in W2K and XP to keep NT in use for a while yet. I could rant about the sad state of comercial software today, but I'm sure you've already heard it. Hardware keeps getting better, but software always compensates. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif



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You don't learn much when you do it right the first time.

[mjc]

Stevie,

The problem is that many of the boards that don't support over 8gigs do not have a flash available to "fix" the BIOS. Or if they do it is nearly impossible to find.

Not everyone is going to want to change their motherboard just so they can use a larger drive. As a matter of fact alot of people would become very irrate if I suggested that to them as a way to "fix" a problem that they don't even understand as being a problem! They just want to use this brnad new drive in their existing system without having to shell out more money.

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mjc
Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.


Please Post Questions in the forums, not my email. Thanks