Hard Drive Size Recognition Problem

[thrillhouse1515]

Hi,

I recently bought a Western Digital 320GB Hard Drive to use as a storage device.WD3200JB

I set it up in my computer and noticed that it was only showing 128GB rather than the full 320GB. So I spent some time looking up how to fix it.

On the Western Digital Support page it says the following:

Question:
Why is the full capacity of EIDE drives larger than 137GB (128GB binary) not recognized in Windows 2000/XP?


Cause:
The Windows Operating System, Motherboard BIOS, or PCI IDE controller BIOS does not currently support 48-bit LBA (Logical Block Addressing).


Resolution:
48-bit LBA support is necessary for drives larger than 137GB (128GB binary). The following conditions are necessary for the correct functioning of 48-bit LBA support in Windows 2000/XP:

Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1) or Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 (SP3) must be installed for Windows or a registry key must be manually added to Windows' Registry. For information about Windows XP Service Pack 1, see Microsoft Article 322389 or for Windows 2000 Service Pack 3, see Microsoft Article 320853.


* The system must have a 48-bit LBA-compatible Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) installed. This includes EIDE controller card BIOSs. Please determine with the computer, motherboard, or PCI IDE controller manufacturer if this hardware supports 48-bit LBA.

So it recommended updating the 1) Motherboard BIOS, 2) installing SP1, 3) and updating the IDE controller.

I have an old Asus A7V Mother Board, the one shown here.

I went to the Asus site to update the BIOS and downloaded the 1011 version which gave a description of, "A7V BIOS 1011 Support 48-bit HDD." On the POST start up it shows the 1011 version.

I had Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1) installed.

Up to this point it still didn't show the full size of the Hard Drive. In my Mother board manual it says:

UltraDMA100: Comes with an onboard PCI Bus Master IDE controller with two connectors that support four ATA100 devices on two channels and two connectors that support four ATA66/33 devices on two channels. Supports UltraDMA/100, UltraDMA66, UltraDMA33, PIO Modes 3 & 4 and Bus Master IDE DMA mode 2, and Enhanced IDE devices, such as DVD, CD, CDRW, LS-120, and Tape backup drives

So on the Western Digital site here i downloaded the "Promise Ultra 100 TX2 Controller Card Driver". I believe I am using an onboard IDE controller so in Devince Manager under SCSI and Raid controllers I updated the "Promise Technology Inc. Ultra IDE controller" to the "Promise Ultra 100 TX2 Controller Card " drivers. I rebooted and checked to see if it would show the full size and it finally did!

However, my joy was soon squashed when I started experiencing problems when I would run some video or audio files or turn on my TV Tuner. The audio would start to make some screeching noises while the file played and/or the video would start to jitter. While using my TV tuner the same thing would happen to the audio and video and would even crash the program and comp. I couldn't figure out what the problem was so I reinstalled my TV drivers and software but the problem didn't go away.

So then I went back to device manager and clicked properties of the "Promise Ultra 100 TX2 Controller Card" and rolled back the drivers to the previous version. Restarted the comp and then my video/audio files and my TV tuner would starrted to run fine again. But now the problem was it would only show 128GB of the hard drive rather than the full.

So I can't figure how to solve this problem? What's causing the conflict when i update the drivers to the "Promise Ultra 100 TX2 Controller Card Driver"? Why does that happen to my audio video and how do I fix it?

I hope I provided enough info to try and figure this out.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Covered_in_bees]

As far as I can see, the "Promise Ultra 100 TX2 Controller Card" is an accessory you can buy from WD to support drives larger than 137GB, so I'm not sure loading those drivers will work.

I checked the ASUS website, and there is a post in the FAQ relating to this, and there it is suggested that you update the BIOS to 1012a7v.01a.

Hope this helps

 

[thrillhouse1515]

As far as I can see, the "Promise Ultra 100 TX2 Controller Card" is an accessory you can buy from WD to support drives larger than 137GB, so I'm not sure loading those drivers will work.

I checked the ASUS website, and there is a post in the FAQ relating to this, and there it is suggested that you update the BIOS to 1012a7v.01a.

Hope this helps

I updated the BIOS to 1012a7v.01a like you suggested but it still seems as if its not working 🙁. Thx for the suggestion though)

But I decided to try another method. I loaded the Promise Ultra 100 TX2 Controller Card drivers to get the full 320GB, but this time I made two partitions of 127GB each out of it. Then I rolled back the drivers to the previous ones and restarted the comp. Surprisingly, both partitions were still there using the older drivers. So I formatted each partition again and am trying to use them. I don't know how reliable this is but so far its working. Although I was not able to get the other 70GB of the hard drive into another partition, i'm out of ideas for the moment so i'm stuck with this set up. I just hope there aren't any surprises with the disk getting corrupted somehow later on and I end up losing whatever data I put on it. That would suck. Would still like to figure out how to get it working the way it was suppose to be.

 

[Covered_in_bees]

One other option would be to buy that PCI card ($29.99 I think it was), although it is rather annoying that you should have to spend additional money when the motherboard manufacturer claims it's BIOS update supports drives larger than 137GB.

Best of luck with the partitions solution (maybe you could make a 3rd partition to get the last 70GB).

Unfortunately, I don't have any other ideas. Maybe there's someone else out there who has had a similar problem and has a solution.

 

[DragonDoc]

Hi,

I recently bought a Western Digital 320GB Hard Drive to use as a storage device.WD3200JB

I set it up in my computer and noticed that it was only showing 128GB rather than the full 320GB. So I spent some time looking up how to fix it.

On the Western Digital Support page it says the following:

Question:
Why is the full capacity of EIDE drives larger than 137GB (128GB binary) not recognized in Windows 2000/XP?

Cause:
The Windows Operating System, Motherboard BIOS, or PCI IDE controller BIOS does not currently support 48-bit LBA (Logical Block Addressing).


Resolution:
48-bit LBA support is necessary for drives larger than 137GB (128GB binary). The following conditions are necessary for the correct functioning of 48-bit LBA support in Windows 2000/XP:

Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1) or Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 (SP3) must be installed for Windows or a registry key must be manually added to Windows' Registry. For information about Windows XP Service Pack 1, see Microsoft Article 322389 or for Windows 2000 Service Pack 3, see Microsoft Article 320853.


* The system must have a 48-bit LBA-compatible Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) installed. This includes EIDE controller card BIOSs. Please determine with the computer, motherboard, or PCI IDE controller manufacturer if this hardware supports 48-bit LBA.

So it recommended updating the 1) Motherboard BIOS, 2) installing SP1, 3) and updating the IDE controller.

I have an old Asus A7V Mother Board, the one shown here.

I went to the Asus site to update the BIOS and downloaded the 1011 version which gave a description of, "A7V BIOS 1011 Support 48-bit HDD." On the POST start up it shows the 1011 version.

I had Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1) installed.

Up to this point it still didn't show the full size of the Hard Drive. In my Mother board manual it says:

UltraDMA100: Comes with an onboard PCI Bus Master IDE controller with two connectors that support four ATA100 devices on two channels and two connectors that support four ATA66/33 devices on two channels. Supports UltraDMA/100, UltraDMA66, UltraDMA33, PIO Modes 3 & 4 and Bus Master IDE DMA mode 2, and Enhanced IDE devices, such as DVD, CD, CDRW, LS-120, and Tape backup drives

So on the Western Digital site here i downloaded the "Promise Ultra 100 TX2 Controller Card Driver". I believe I am using an onboard IDE controller so in Devince Manager under SCSI and Raid controllers I updated the "Promise Technology Inc. Ultra IDE controller" to the "Promise Ultra 100 TX2 Controller Card " drivers. I rebooted and checked to see if it would show the full size and it finally did!

However, my joy was soon squashed when I started experiencing problems when I would run some video or audio files or turn on my TV Tuner. The audio would start to make some screeching noises while the file played and/or the video would start to jitter. While using my TV tuner the same thing would happen to the audio and video and would even crash the program and comp. I couldn't figure out what the problem was so I reinstalled my TV drivers and software but the problem didn't go away.

So then I went back to device manager and clicked properties of the "Promise Ultra 100 TX2 Controller Card" and rolled back the drivers to the previous version. Restarted the comp and then my video/audio files and my TV tuner would starrted to run fine again. But now the problem was it would only show 128GB of the hard drive rather than the full.

So I can't figure how to solve this problem? What's causing the conflict when i update the drivers to the "Promise Ultra 100 TX2 Controller Card Driver"? Why does that happen to my audio video and how do I fix it?

I hope I provided enough info to try and figure this out.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Get a new motherboard. You might find another motherboard out there that will handle your K7 CPU. MSI is still making 1 (K7N2 Delta2-LSR) model that is up to date and will handle your hard drive. Zipzoomfly has it for $60.00. You may have reached the limites of your board bios. I assume ASUS will not provide an update since they have new models.

Or try a Seagate Hard Drive :lol:

 

[blue68f100]

Generally a BIOS upates correct the problem.

Since this is an older mb, What conductor cable are you using on the IDE controller, 40 or 80. You should be using a 80 for ATA100/133. And no optical disk on the same buss.

If you right click on My Computer, then select manage, Then disk mangement under storage. You should be able to resize and correct the problem.

Promise has a batch of raid controller chips that had a bug that prevented them from supporting LBA48bit. These were also present in SnapAppliance 4100 servers. There was a firware update to correct the problem. Snap did not release a fix for theirs.

Did you try any of the utilites on WD Cd that came with the drive?

 

[Buser]

I just wanted to let you know that I have the same motherboard as you (Asus A7v) and that I have exactly the same problem. I actually have 3 of these boards and they all have this problem. I have tried both the 1011 and 1012 beta versions of the bios and many different drivers. The drivers that ship with Windows XP work fine, except I do not believe that they support 48 bit addressing, so they won't see more than a 128 Gig hard drive. If I use any of the drivers from asus or promise for the controller, I get sound issues and a jerky mouse whether I am using a PS/2 port or a USB port. What I finally did is just plug in my 200 gig seagate drive into the regular Primary IDE controller. It only supports ATA/66, but I don't notice. I also turned off the promise bios in the system bios to prevent it from slowing down my boot time. Now, everything works great. I am sure that there is a slight performance hit because of this, but it's an older computer anyways. I just thought I would save you some headache because I have tried every combination possible to get it to work with the Promise ATA/100 controller to no avail. Thanks!

Nick

 

[mpjesse]

Have you tried downloading the latest motherboard drivers from Asus's site? They should include the latest IDE drivers in them.

-mpjesse

 

[Buser]

Are you talking about the via 4-in-1's? I've installed those as well. No difference. I think it's a problem with the promise drivers themself.