NoIWillNotFixYourComputerFilter

January 29, 2008 1:49 PM

NoIWillNotFixYourComputerFilter: I've got a 500 gig that won't show up in Windows XP. Help!

So I bought this 500 gig IDE drive. I'm using Windows XP SP2. I installed it in my box. My BIOS sees it. Windows doesn't. In Disk Manager, I see it as a 128 gig drive, but it still doesn't appear in Explorer (even if it did, I want those other 372 other gigs dammit). I tried using this firmware update via floppy for my hard drive controller (promise ide ultra100 tx2), but booting it up yielded a split screen: half was the menu, half was blackness.

So uh. wtf? I've scoured google and found people with similar problems, especially people with SATA drives. But that's not what I've got, so. Could anybody lend me some pearls of wisdom? I'm pretty sure it's not a loose ribbon.

posted by Lockeownzj00 to computers & internet (7 comments total)

You're talking about Disk 2, right? You'll need to format it - it should give you the option of choosing how big you want the formatted drive to be. The 128 might be a default or "set aside" partition.
posted by porpoise at 2:01 PM on January 29

Are you [i]sure[/i] you're using SP2? This was a big problem in pre-SP1 versions of Windows XP, which did not support 48-bit Logical Block Addressing (LBA). In those older, pre-LBA versions, the big drives would alls how up as 128 or 137 gig drives.


Are you also sure you're running the latest versions for the Promise IDE controller? Even though XP might install some default drivers, the latest and greatest XP drivers from the manufacturer might address this issue.
posted by QuantumMeruit at 2:03 PM on January 29

how did you format the drive? if you booted off of your install disk and used its format utility make sure that it is a xp sp2 disk. if it is a pre sp2 disk here is the microsoft kb article on how to format your drive.

not that it particularly matters but you will only be getting approximately 338GB.
posted by phil at 2:13 PM on January 29

not that it particularly matters but you will only be getting approximately 338GB.

???

I'm seeing 367G available capacity on a freshly formatted 400G drive right now. I'd hope a 500G would show more, not less.
posted by Pinback at 2:27 PM on January 29

pinback

338GB in addition to the already visable 128GB for a grand total of 466GB ish.
posted by phil at 2:35 PM on January 29

Is it a WD drive? Per the Promise page, you'll need the WD version of the controller driver.
posted by zamboni at 2:42 PM on January 29

This actually sounds like you are running into the ATA 128 GB size limit. The fix I used was to buy a ATA/IDE 133 controller card. From what I understand the 128GB limit is due to the way that the memory is addressed, so I don't know how getting a card helps, but that was the recommendation that came in the documentation for my HD.
posted by gravity at 9:57 AM on January 31