137 gb limitations/200 gb hard drive

[budz]

This probably has been asked before but I will ask anyway. I built 2 pc's a few weeks ago and couldn't use a 200 GB Maxtor hard drive because of the 137 gb limitations. I used the maxblaster cd that came with the drive and partitioned it into 3. The darn thing would just freeze up. Operating system I chose was windows 2000. In the manual for the drive it said if the drive doesn't not work on the motherboard ide, a pci ide controller card would have to be used & the drive could only be used as a storage drive. There must be some other way around this right? I didn't want the 200 gb hard drive be used entirely as the "C" drive. I like having the "C" drive like only 25 gbs and the other 2 partitions with the remaining gbs.

I would appreciate any comments or advice. I did have the latest BIOS on the motherboards and set to AUTO to detect HD. I ended up using 120 gb hard drives on each pc. I kept the 200 gb for myself & using it with a removable hard drive mobile rack connected to ata 133 maxtor pci ide controller card.

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[gastorgrab]

48-bit LBA requires at least an ATA-133 controller (you already know), but Windows 2000 doesn't support 48-bit LBA until Service Pack 3 (even with MaxBlaster).

I'm guessing you've already seen the page;
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;305098

Seems like your copy of Win2k is pre-Service Pack 3.

You could Slipstream the latest Service Pack onto Win2k and make a new install disk. 48-bit LBA should be available at the time of install.

Slipstream Win2k with integrated Service Pack

[budz]

Thanks for replying to my post! I actually have WINDOWS 2000 PRO W/SP4. There's always something I learn with each pc I build. Dunno why if the BIOS is set for HD ACCESS is set to AUTO, why it won't detect a big HD. I'm assuming if I changed it to LBA then perhaps it would be ok. I'll take a look at the Slipstream link you posted. Thanks again!
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