There are three factors: the HDD itself, the HDD controller on your mobo, and the OS. Over a decade ago they went to using "LBA" for disk addressing. At that time they used 28-bit addressing for LBA, which allows for a maximum size to 138 Billion bytes (or, M$ Windows calls that 127 GB).
Around 2000 that system was upgraded to "48-bit LBA Support", which allows for HDD's up into the petabyte region! All three components of the system need to support 48-bit LBA for this to work. Whether or not your mobo's HDD controller has this should be available from your mobo manufacturer's website. Look for statements about "48-bit LBA" or HDD's over 127 GB. Just plain "LBA" or "Large hard drive" is not clear enough. WARNING: If you try to use an OS that allows larger drives when the HDD controller does not, you could corrupt your drive. Basically in some situations the OS may try to write to an area above 127 GB, but the controller will fail to pass on the full address, and the write operation will happen near the start of the drive, corrupting what's there.
As another clue, ALL SATA drive systems (controllers and HDD's) support 48-bit LBA - the new system was in place when SATA was introduced, and it was built into the SATA designs. So in your case if you are installing a SATA drive, for sure the HDD and its controller will be OK.
On the OS side, it also needs to support 48-bit LBA. Windows 2000 did not until a later Service Pack (I think 4, but I'm not sure). Win XP originally did not; it was added with SP1 and continued thereafter. If you don't have SP2 installed (or at very least SP1), download and install now.