Can XP see a 160gig HD?

[nforcerwannabe]

I've heard in the past that xp will only recognize a hd that is only so big. The exact number of gigs your allowed escapes me.

The reason I am asking is that I just bought a 160gig hd at office depot for $100 after rebates. All enthused about it I pop it in, initialize the disk, and take a gander at the final size. Low and behold its 139gigs.... Now I know hds don’t come anywhere near their designated storage like all the 120's I own are about 111gigs. But come on man 20 gigs missing...?! I then thought maybe xp doesn’t see anything over maybe 140gigs, if this is so am I able to partition the drive into a 140gig and a 20gig sector? If not that’s really disappointing. Thanks!

[John Prophet]

Didnt it come with a pci controller card??

I dont think the limitation is with XP, it is more likely somehow the BIOS of the motherboard....but if it came with a controller card, that should overcome the limitation.

I looked in my XP Resource Kit (the huge msoft book) and it says the size limit on NTFS is around 16 terabytes...so I think your ok there, hehe.

maybe have a look at the manufacturers website, surely if there is an issue they have a faq about it.

JP

[John Prophet]

the number 137 gigs comes to mind as some sort of limit, lol. That may be the limit of your motherboards bios.

JP

[Martoch]

Some Google digging...

Getting back to that 160 GB drive, capacity has surged to pass the imagination of software engineers of the early 21st century. The 32 bit addressing used in the original version of Windows XP and earlier Windows iterations is limited to 137 GB.

[Kuasimodem]

Hmmmm...

With XP Pro, my 160Gb RAID 0 array gives me a final size of 151.8Gb with NTFS file system. Master partition is 48.8Gb, Storage partition is 103Gb.

What file system are you using?

[John Prophet]

He has to be using ntfs cuz fat32 in xp supposedly only allows for 32g drives. (or 37, but I think 32).

JP

[nforcerwannabe]

I am running xp pro (NTFS). It didn’t come with a controller card.

So does that mean I have a early version of xp? And will splitting the drive help?

Originally posted by John Prophet
He has to be using ntfs cuz fat32 in xp supposedly only allows for 32g drives. (or 37, but I think 32).

JP

It can only FORMAT upto 32GB's, it can read upto 2TB's or whatever.

[Gait_Keeper]

good info so far, thanx all I never knew XP read into terabytes

so what's the answer to the thread topic??

I'm going to XP soon, win98se now, trying to read everything about xp for now

thanx everyone

[nforcerwannabe]

Yeah thanks all this is truly good info. I just love this board a few minutes into posting I have responses. No tech support in the world is this good