500gB drive with non 48-bit LBA bios and Windows XP

[greenisaac]

Hi there, hopefully this is just the right place for this question.

I have been searching all over the net for the answer to my problem but I have been getting conflicting information.

I have upgraded the hard drive of my ageing HP Pavilion 7929 with a Western Digital 500Gb.

The drive was installed as the master on the IDE cable to the motherboard. I could not work out if the bios had full 48-bit LBA support and as the 500Gb drive seemed to be seen as around 80Gb I suspect it does not so I partitioned it as 50Gb.

Once I installed Windows XP sp2 I reclaimed the rest of the space (aprox 430Gb) using Windows XP disc management tools.

All seems OK but I am now worried after reading conflicting information that the either the smaller Windows XP partition or the large partition (which I will use for storage and maybe program installation to keep the windows partition clean) may get corrupted when the disc fills up.

Can someone finally end my confusion and tell me if this is a safe thing to do e.g. once Windows XP sp2 has booted up from the 50Gb partition Win XP completely takes over so the data is safe or can the non 48-bit LBA bios cause problems while Win XP is running?

I would have thought it would be OK as Intel provided a the accelerator patch for non 48-bit LBA boards to work with Windows 98 but I am worried. While Intel say "Windows XP Users: 48-bit LBA BIOS support is not necessary" Intel info

Microsoft says that it is Microsoft info.

I was going to purchase a PCI ATA controller card to ensure full compatibility but they seem to be hard to find now.

Hopefully someone can give me the definitive answer. Many thanks.