250G hard drive in Windows XP

[JohnK93]

Hi all,
I recently tried installing a 250G hard drive as the secondary IDE slave device (120G as the master). The device is recognized in startup and BIOS, but it does not show up in My Computer. My father said that Windows XP will not recognize a hard drive larger than 137G without an IDE controller card. Can somebody please verify this, or is there some way around this problem?

BTW, I have 3 open SATA ports on my Asus A8N mobo, but since my father had an extra 250G IDE drive, I thought I'd just use that.

Thanks,
John

 

[X DarthMonkey X]

Okay-dokey. Your father is probably wrong, I'm almost positive. Because I've had 400G IDE Hard Drives plugged directly into the mobo before.

Here's something to try:

1) Right-click on My Computer
2) Click on Manage
3) Click on Disk Magement (Near the bottom of the tree on the left)
4) See if it has your 300G HDD listed there.

If it IS listed, but does not show in My Computer, then format it. (Right-click>format) Make an NTFS Partition and then if it still doesn't show, click "Action>All Tasks>Activate Partition". That should make it show in My Computer. Most new drives ship without a partition and are not usable until formatted, this should solve that problem.

If it IS NOT listed, then go to the device manager and look under Disk Drives, if it's not listed there, then let us know.

EDIT: I've had 300G HDDs plugged into the mobo i mean, I can't say I've actually seen a 400G IDE drive.

 

[JohnK93]

OK...I'll try that

Thanks for the quick response. I won't be able to try that until I get home from work today, but I'll post back later.

John

 

[Didou]

If Service Pack 1 at least is installed you won't have any problems detecting & using the full size of the drive. Just go into the Disk Management console as suggested & create a new partition on that disk.

 

[X DarthMonkey X]

Ya, he's right: SP1 or higher won't have any problems with it. I completely forgot about that.

 

[X DarthMonkey X]

Oh, this here should help massively as well!
https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic36678.html

It's a guide to HDDs larger than 137G.

 

[JohnK93]

SATA and IDE on one mobo?

Thanks for the replies and the link...sounds like I should be able to use the 250G without any more trouble. I just built the computer with a brand new copy of Win XP with SP2, so it looks like it'll work.

I noticed that that link suggested not mixing SATA and IDE hard drives on a mobo as it could confuse windows. Is there truth to this? I've been running one of each on my new build without any trouble. OS and programs are on the 80Gb SATA, and my data (music, pics, etc) is on the 120Gb IDE. Has anyone had trouble with this?

Thanks,
John

 

[JohnK93]

Works good...thanks for the help.


John