MAxtor 250 problem

BruceY

Brand new Maxtor 250GB drive. tried to install Win2kPro first. But I found out win2k only sees 131GB, so I stopped part way thru. I went and purchased WinXP Pro with sp2. Once that was installed, it too only sees 131GB. I did not fdisk the drive between OS setups and wonder if by not doing a fdisk /mbr, I "fooled XP to thinking there is only 131GB? SOUND PLAUSABLE?

kryyst

You need to get maxtors disk utils to be able to see a driver over 130gb. It'll create a boot loader for it that will allow you to exceed the drive limitations.

BruceY

I had used MaxBlast v3 and it too saw just 131 after the Win2k partial install

Hawk

(I did not fdisk the drive between OS setups and wonder if by not doing a fdisk /mbr, I "fooled XP to thinking there is only 131GB? SOUND PLAUSABLE?)
Very well could be...Make sure you delete all partitions first. Wipe the drive. Then go from there. And for the original setup just let XP set the partition. I just went through this. It was a pain until it dawned on me what was happening.
If you install SP1 or SP2 after you install Windows, the entire size of the drive will become available. They actually have the fixes in them. Create the OS partition, load XP, install the Service Pack, then create any additional partitions afterwards.
For example the 250 GB drive will format to 133 GB. However if you want to actually install Windows 2000 or XP on the drive you have to create a smaller partition (131 GB or less) then do the updates then you can have access to remaining hard drive space in Disk Management.

Here's one of the problems explained... Enable 48-bit LBA in Win XP
Hope this helps.

BruceY

Thank you....I'm gonna fdisk the drive then fdisk /mbr later today. My WinXP already has SP2 as part of the system.