alexh110

Thanks very much for the replies. I've decided not to install BHDD31.ZIP, since this probably assumes that I have version 2225 of ESDI_506, instead of 2222. So I'm concerned it may screw up my system! Can you give me any more information on the changes Microsoft made between versions 2222 and 2225? I was hoping someone would have the same mobo as me, so they could confirm that it definitely does support HDD's above 137GB. It says in the documentation that it supports UDMA Mode 6; but does this imply that it has 48-bit LBA support? Since my Maxtor HDD is UDMA-7, I wonder whether this is backwards compatible with a UDMA-6 mobo?

I have a multi-boot configuration, with Win 98 SE and Win XP SP3. Recently installed a new 160GB HDD, and discovered that some of my Word Documents were not being correctly read in the Win 98 partition. After a bit of research I discovered this issue with the 128GB limit. I have installed version 2222 of LLXX's patch, and it seems to have solved the problem; but I'm slightly worried that my data could still be corrupted at some point. I'm not entirely clear whether the Win 98 issue is to do with the HDD total capacity; or the size of the partitions used? There seems to be conflicting information on this. I've checked in Device Manager, and the system is correctly loading the new driver from the IOSUBSYS directory. I can't run Scandisk on the new drive under Win 98, since it says there's not enough memory. Would it be a suitable test if I rebooted to DOS from the Win 98 partition, and ran scandisk under DOS? Since my system had version 2222 rather than 2225, I obviously never downloaded the latest IDE drivers for Win 98 from Microsoft. I wondered if there's anything in that update that would improve performance on my HDD's; or would I be better off sticking with what I've got? As I understand it there are two issues with HDD's over 128GB. Firstly the Win 98 problem; but also I need to check that my hardware is 48-bit LBA capable. I have the following: AS ROCK K7VT2 Version 2.00 mobo, with American Megatrends BIOS version P1.20, Firmware Version 101.114, Date 12/10/2002. plus these HDD's: Western Digital 40GB, ATAPI-5, CHS: 4865, 255, 63 (System Drive with Win 98 and Win XP partitions) Seagate 120GB, ATAPI-6, CHS: 19457, 255, 63 (48bit LBA capable) Maxtor 160GB, ATAPI-7, CHS: 14593, 255, 63 (48bit LBA capable) According to AS ROCK FAQ's all of their mobos are 48-bit LBA capable, but it's unclear whether this means all their current mobos; or all the mobos they've ever produced? I would assume it's the latter, and the BIOS does seem to be correctly detecting the Maxtor's capacity. However this doesn't guarantee that the hardware is 48-bit LBA capable, and I would ideally like to have a cast-iron guarantee that it is!