Drives sizes in XP

[DADINK13]

I heard somewhere that WinXP doesn't support hard drives larger than 130Gb. Is that true?




Just need to make sure before I mess anything up with anything.

[Robpol86]

no...

i got a 160 GB hdd and i can use all of it, even though my mobo has a limit of 123 GBs... i dunno

[fuuucckkers]

Here's the info your looking for, and then some.

NTFS
Recommended minimum volume size is approximately 10 megabytes (MB).
Volumes much larger than 2 terabytes (TB) are possible.


FAT32
Volumes from 512 MB to 2 TB.
In Windows XP, you can format a FAT32 volume up to 32 GB only.
Does not support domains.
Maximum file size is 4GB.

FAT(16)
Volumes from floppy disk size up to 4 gigabytes (GB).
Does not support domains
Maximum file size is 2GB.

[DADINK13]

Hmmm....okay..



I asked because I remember when I bought my 180Gb WD hard drive for backing stuff up onto, it included a controller card that "supported drives larger than 130Gb." Maybe it's a motherboard limit then..?

[Robpol86]

yes, back in the old days, but flashing your bios might fix it. or using wd or maxtor's hdd tools will also pass the limit

[insomica]

FAT32
Volumes from 512 MB to 2 TB.
In Windows XP, you can format a FAT32 volume up to 32 GB only.
Does not support domains.
Maximum file size is 4GB.

Can you explain domains more?

[fuuucckkers]

internet domains. --- yourname.com

my guess is its saying you can't use it as a server.

[Anthony]

I think he means network domains...

[Jon8RFC]

Actually, I'd like to throw in my little bit of info because I encountered a problem recently when installing XP on a new computer with a large hard drive.

I was building a computer with an i865 chipset and one of the hdd's was a Western Digital 2500JB 250gig. I was using Win XP Pro Corp because I couldn't find my SP1 cd. Well, when I got to the point of choosing the hard drive, I saw that it recognized the 250gig as only 131,xxx,xxx?!?! I went ahead and installed anyways. Went into my computer and there it was...127gigs. I was like "wtf?!" I didn't want to reinstall because by the time I realized this, I had already installed some programs. I thought it was the mobo's old BIOS...nope wasn't that. I thought XP wasn't supporting the drive size, confirmed from multiple friends that it wasn't that either.

I went BACK into Windows XP setup and tried to format the drive as a 250 but it kept seeing it as small, checked CMOS and it saw it as a 250. So I figured XP didn't know what was going on, but I was told firmly "yes, it will support your drive" like I assumed it should've in the first place.

Well, 2 days later after thinking hard and trying weird stuff, it popped in my head,where have I messed with hard drives before...MANAGE!!! So I went back to XP setup, DELETED the partition and exited out of setup. I booted Windows back up, right clicked on my computer, hit manage, and saw the hard drive right there. WELL...it was seeing it as a 250 so I got all excited! Just did the format from within XP and there that bad boy was, 250gig'er NOW ACTIVE!

I guess when installing, XP Pro Corp only supports 127 :/
Not sure how XP Pro w/ SP1 works with fresh installs and formatting large hard drives, but it doesn't matter because you can get it sorted out within XP anyways.

[Robpol86]

i read everything fast so i might have not caught this.

did u try using those tools that wd comes with? EZ-BIOS? that could have helped. and partition magic would too.
but u solved ur prob so its ok

[Jon8RFC]

Wasn't that bg of a problem, it's just because I had the new drive in there when I was installing XP fresh. There wouldn't have BEEN a problem had I installed the hdd AFTER I installed XP :/ Not like there was a problem, just one of those simple little things that can really bug the crap out of you hehe.