Hard Disk Formatting Capacity

[DennisLo]

I just formatted a 160 gig hard drive with the included Maxtor Maxblast software included. I have Windows ME, why is it that a 160 gig hard drive only formats to 137 gig?? That is a tremendous loss of space. My main drive is a 20 gig Maxtor and after it was formatted it had like 19.4 meg on it. As a matter of fact I had a 80 gig Maxtor and it formatted to 74 gig. All of these drives were formatted FAT32. This 160 gig doesn't have any dos, just the bare drive was formatted to be used for storage of files. Is there any software that I can format the drive with to get more than 137 gig off of a 160 gig drive? I mean I lost 23 gig which is larger than my bootup 20 gig drive.

Dennis

[Shawn711]

While this link is from Seagate's website, it should explain the answer you are looking for....... http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/di...137_winme.html Pretty much amounts to Windows ME only natively supports up to a 137 GB hard drive. Sounds like it can be worked around with the right chipset though. I would recommend looking at Maxtor's site and see if they have any info on a work around, so to speak...

Shawn

Welcome to TechIMO!

[DennisLo]

Shawn;

Thanks, I have seen this drive in stores with a label saying software included to support full drive capacity. I had a 80 gig Maxotr go down and they sent me this 160 gig bare drive, not complaining, but I guess need to find this software.

[Urban_Squrill]

Welcome to TechIMO!!!!

[DennisLo]

I went and purchased the SIIG Ultra ATA 133 PCI controller and that recognized the drive correctly as 160 gig and I reformatted the drive and it now is the full amount in WinME. Actually, what a waste of a good mb. I have 4 Abit BX440 RAID boards and the reason I purchased them several years ago was for a couple reasons. First, because they had the ability to support 8 IDE devices, 4 of them ATA100. The RAID function also is wonderul but I really wanted a place for all those smaller hard drives when you keep getting larger ones. So, the SIIG Ultra ATA 133 controller now has the two hard drives I had on the Primary and Secondary of the ATA RAID. Just a waste of controller ports and a waste of money to buy an add on controller card for $40 on a motherboard that already supports 4 ATA 100 and 4 standard ID devices. It may be possible for the ATA RAID tIDE Ports to work also in conjunction with the SIIG but I am not to be about trying it out now. Although I am sure you are paying for it when you purchase a Maxtor High Capacity Hard Drive, they now include the Maxtor PCI Ultra ATA133 card in the package. But, another wasted slot in your computer. They could easily incorporate this right in the IDE of the drive. Well, ATA drives are going to be taking over soon, more hardware conversions.

Dennis

[John Prophet]

Could you have just split the hard drive into two partitions to avoid the 137G limit?

JP

[DennisLo]

I tried that with no luck, to have two partitions. In fact, I had trouble even with the new controller getting it back to 160 gb. I do believe you can split it easy enough though by using maxblast and completely erasing the partition first. They don't say that in the documentation and that is what was confusing. I kept trying to set up the hard drive from scratch and it refused to let me go above the 137 gig even though the computer booted up showing 160. But, I went to one of the utilities and asked it to completely erase the partition and then I was able to have the full amount available. What was confusing is maxblast kept saying everything on the hard drive would be lost and that was fine but it never said make sure partition is erased.. The program should automatically say any partitions will be erased if a re-setup is done. But if you don't do it yourself you could be in limbo land trying to figure why bootup shows 160 gig and yet you can't go above 137 gig. But, I now agree you should be able to do that I think but this is a thought. When I booted the computer up with only that drive in and not the newer ATA133 controller I always got the bios bootup saying the hard drive was a Maxtor 137 gig drive even when it was formated for 137 gig but with the newer ATA133 controller it would say 160 gig on bootup.