Reformatting Question



  • I have been trying to google this and have failed.  I don't have the patience to beat my head against internet fora any longer, so I'll ask you.  It goes like this:

    I have two hard drives

    1 (40 GB) came with the system Compaq Presario (SR1103WM if it matters ... yes I know it's a piece of shit).  This is the one I want to format.  Internal

    1 (300 GB) I bought about a year ago.  I want to keep the data on this one.  It's in two partitions. Seagate st3300622a if it matters.  Internal

    THE RUB:

    When I originally installed the big hard drive, I had to download something special from Microsoft so that Windows would recognize more than 127 GB of the hard drive.  Apparently that's the limit of what Windows can address with its (I'm guessing) 32-bit integer address.

    I've downloaded the Seagate Disc Wizard, which would help me create NEW partitions, but it says nothing anywhere (even the help) about reusing partitions that already exist on the hard drive.  I do not know where the original disc that came with the hard drive is.  This is unusual for me, as I keep everything.

    Should I have any trouble trying to use the existing partitions on the 300 GB hard drive, assuming I install the special Microsoft crap before I try to use the 300 GB hard drive? 



  • @belgariontheking said:

    When I originally installed the big hard drive, I had to download something special from Microsoft so that Windows would recognize more than 127 GB of the hard drive.  Apparently that's the limit of what Windows can address with its (I'm guessing) 32-bit integer address.

    It's the 28-bit limit of the older ATA addressing mechanism. All newer software and hardware should support LBA48 mode, with a limit of 128Pb.

    Should I have any trouble trying to use the existing partitions on the 300 GB hard drive, assuming I install the special Microsoft crap before I try to use the 300 GB hard drive? 

    No. It has nothing to do with the data on the drive, it's purely a question of the interface to the ATA controller.



  • @belgariontheking said:

    When I originally installed the big hard drive, I had to download something special from Microsoft so that Windows would recognize more than 127 GB of the hard drive. 
     

    Mostly the software was a small DOS TSR to patch the system Bios so it could talk to the high areas of the drives, and a VxD for Windows to do the same thing.

    You should be able to just plug the drives into a modern machine and be able to see what's there without any trouble. I don't believe the software did anything funky with partitions, it just let ancient systems use the big drives. So your data'll still be there. Any hey, if your machine's old enough to require that stuff, it's time for an upgrade anyways. That's Swamp-age technology.

     



  • You might want to see [url=http://www.48bitlba.com/]this[/url]. Short version: if you have at least ((2000 SP3 or XP SP1) and 48-bit LBA supporting BIOS), then everything's OK. Otherwise you might want to upgrade or install additional crap, which will work, at least in theory.

    When I bought my 160GB HDD, I just upgraded the BIOS and everything worked fine. (Aside from the fact that the computer refused to boot until some arcane motherboard manipulations.) Interestingly, WinMe seems to recognize the full capacity, although it is supposedly "unsupported"; maybe it's the chipset driver. Anyway, I don't spend much time in Me, and most of the disk is an NTFS partition, so maybe it's just an illusion.



  • @Spectre said:

    maybe it's the chipset driver

    If your "chipset" driver pack happens to include a new IDE driver, that would do the trick, because the problem is that the IDE driver shipped with Windows is out of date. The rest of the system doesn't care.



  • @asuffield said:

    should support LBA48 mode, with a limit of 128Pb.

    damn, I'll have to upgrade to something greater than 48 bit soon!

     


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