Hard drive

[TomcaT]

Did'nt know how to put the title......

What is the maximum partition size that can be done on a ide hd using FAT32 and NTFS, someone I know has a 200gb HD he formatted it and reports 128gb...... just wondered if the file system made any difference? or could it be the OS?

Any comments?

[Cee-Kay]

In regards to your question NTFS supports partitions upto a couple of Terabytes, something none of us could use, not for a while anyway.

File size on NTFS volumes is limited only by the size of the volume.

FAT32 on the other hand I know it has a file size limit of 4 GB. I wasn't entirely sure on the partition size so I checked the Windows XP help file...

In Windows XP, you can format a FAT32 volume up to 32 GB only.

As for the problem your friend has, perhaps the problem is caused by the BIOS. This kind of problem can normally be resolved by upgrading the BIOS software, make sure the instructions are followed carefully to avoid a non-starting system.

I hope this helps.

Cee-Kay

[CoffeeFiend]

That's the 137GB barrier. (137 "pretend" GB or 128 "real" ones, same thing, depends what you pick for 1GB, 1000 or 1024MB). You need 48 bit LBA support. Perhaps a BIOS update could offer it, else a different controller could. The old 28 bit adressing can't address the upper portion of your HD (2^28 sectors of 512 bytes each - or 128GB) Another option could be a new motherboard too. (btw, your OS has to support it too, but if you're using XP SP2 you should be fine)

[TomcaT]

Thanks for the response guys.

Cheers.

[MadGutts]

if not, you can download a patch from maxtor... i used this when i had the problem.

But check the bios first, to see if it is registering a 200Gb hdd...