How do I partition a 320 Gig drive?

[BookWorm]

The IBM PC300PL my Western Digital Scorpio Blue 320 Gig 2.5" hard drive is in has the latest BIOS and will recognize bigger drives than this. But the disk management tool conveniently placed in the system32 folder so it's easy to find (thanks a lot, MicroSoft. > ) insists it's only 128 Gig.

How do I force it to accept the correct size of the drive, and partition it as a single 320 Gig?

[Tripredacus]

Please post your Operating System.

[BookWorm]

2000 Professional, with service pack 4.

[cdob]

Set EnableBigLba mode:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305098/

[TSRI]

Please excuse the slight hijack, but it seems relevant.

Details: Win2K Server SP4, Primary DC, installed on a 160 Gig hard drive, which is recognized in Windows as 129 Gig (BIOS does see the full 160 G). What happens if I enable LBA and add the registry key in Win2K as the MS Support article suggests? Will I reboot and find a corrupt partition or inaccessible data? I do not know how this disk was originally formatted or what size it was formatted to. Thanks in advance

Set EnableBigLba mode:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305098/

[jaclaz]

Please excuse the slight hijack, but it seems relevant.

Details: Win2K Server SP4, Primary DC, installed on a 160 Gig hard drive, which is recognized in Windows as 129 Gig (BIOS does see the full 160 G). What happens if I enable LBA and add the registry key in Win2K as the MS Support article suggests? Will I reboot and find a corrupt partition or inaccessible data? I do not know how this disk was originally formatted or what size it was formatted to. Thanks in advance

Check the data in partition table.

You can do it "approximately" by looking at the disk in disk management or "exactly" by veryfying the partition(s) table with any partition table viewer/editor, example:

http://www.dtidata.com/ntfs_partition_repair.htm

Most probably, you have a 128 gb partition and the rest of the disk unpartitioned.

Please note that a few hard disks do have a jumper to limit the capacity shown to 128 Gb, you should also check this.

jaclaz

[TSRI]

Check the data in partition table.

You can do it "approximately" by looking at the disk in disk management or "exactly" by veryfying the partition(s) table with any partition table viewer/editor, example:

http://www.dtidata.com/ntfs_partition_repair.htm

Most probably, you have a 128 gb partition and the rest of the disk unpartitioned.

Please note that a few hard disks do have a jumper to limit the capacity shown to 128 Gb, you should also check this.

jaclaz

Thanks for the reply jaclaz. Checking the partition with another utility was my next step when I get back to the server. I really couldn't get any info from Disk Management. I'd also love to hear from anyone who's come across this firsthand and what your results were.

[jaclaz]

I really couldn't get any info from Disk Management.

What do you mean?

Check this screenshot:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=141687

In disk 0 you can see:

1. a primary partition (Dark Blue) drive letter D:, 29,88 Gb
   
2. an extended partition (surrounded by a green border) containing:
   
   • a logical volume (Light blue) drive letter C:, 89,53 Gb
     
   • a logical volume (Light blue) drive letter E:, 28,29 Gb
     
   • a logical volume (Light blue) drive letter F:, 150,38 Gb
     

[*]some unused space at the end (Black)

What you should see on your system (as you probably have a single Primary partition) is:

1. a primary partition (Dark Blue) drive letter C:, roughly 128 Gb
   
2. some (lots) unused space at the end (Black)
   

jaclaz

[TSRI]

Hi Jaclaz, I understand Disk Management and the partitions you're referring to. All I have listed is one primary partition of 127.99 G. Though I can tell by the model # of the hard drive that it is a 160 G drive. If Windows 2K isn't capable of recognizing drives larger than 128 Gig, then I'm pretty sure Disk Management isn't capable of identifying unallocated space beyond the 128G barrier. Actually, I'm certain of it - since the 500G drive I installed is listed as a 128G drive with 128 gigs of unallocated space.

[jaclaz]

Hi Jaclaz, I understand Disk Management and the partitions you're referring to. All I have listed is one primary partition of 127.99 G. Though I can tell by the model # of the hard drive that it is a 160 G drive. If Windows 2K isn't capable of recognizing drives larger than 128 Gig, then I'm pretty sure Disk Management isn't capable of identifying unallocated space beyond the 128G barrier. Actually, I'm certain of it - since the 500G drive I installed is listed as a 128G drive with 128 gigs of unallocated space.

Exactly.

Let's put it this way:

If you create a partition on an Operating System that sees a max of 128 Gb of hard disk (LBA 28) and you create it to the maximum size, it will be 128 Gb in size (there will be NO - or very little - unused space after it)

When you activate the LBA48 capability, the same OS (like ANY other LBA48 enabled OS) will see the same 128 Gb partition and a lot of free, unused space behind.

In other words the first partition will remain a 128 Gb partition.

Everything within the 128 Gb will remain EXACTLY as-is the little (or NO) unused space will become LOTS of unused space.

The problem is if you create a bigger than 128 Gb partition on a LBA 48 enabled OS and then try to access it from a NON LBA48 OS.

jaclaz

Edited August 13, 2010 by jaclaz

[TSRI]

Jaclaz, gotcha.... I understand what you're saying. What you're explaining is what I'm hoping for, LOL.

I've got a backup running just to be safe, then I'll update the registry. Thanks!

[os2fan2]

You could patch the setupreg.hiv file to support larger disks.

You need reg.exe from the Windows 2k supplement files (on the cdrom), and a location of the source files to eventually restore to cdrom

The line 'set winsource=' points to the i386 directory of the files copied on the hard drive. Here, i have the cdrom on q:\wnt50sp4

All the rest stays as is. Burn your cdrom in the usual manner, and your cdrom will see large hard drives. I have windows 2000 installed in the middle of a 1 terabyte disk based on this modification.

Reference:

setlocal
set winsource=q:\wnt50sp4\i386
attrib -r -a -s -h %winsource%\setupreg.hiv
reg load HKLM\Setup %winsource%\setupreg.hiv
set regkey=ControlSet001\Services\atapi\Parameters
reg add HKLM\Setup\%regkey% /v EnableBigLba /t reg_dword /d 00000001 /f
reg unload HKLM\Setup
set winsource=
set regkey=
endlocal

[TSRI]

Just wanted to add an update. Everything went fine adding 48 bit LBA and the addition of another hard drive. The issues I had in the back of my mind weren't anything to be concerned with.

Grazie, jaclaz!