When does a 500 gig drive think it's a 128 gig drive?

[lbeachmike]

Okay - I'm having a bad day in the world of tech. All of my hardware is rebelling on me.

I have a brand spankin' new Seagate 7200.9 SATA II 500 gig drive. Installed it into my system via the SATA II connection on my brand new mobo, and it shows up in the Windows Disk Manager as only having 128 gig available for formatting.

:confused:

I have many drives on my system of varying capacities and have never had an issue like this.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

Mike

[Midknyte]

what OS are you using? you would need at least win xp sp1 or win2k sp3.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;303013

[Peter M]

The BIOS software that manages this particular SATA channel must support "48-bit LBA" model for drives larger than 128 GiB (137 GB); same for your OS.

Else, the drive still "thinks" it is the full capacity, it's only that the software can't reach beyond the addressable limit of the old (28-bit LBA) model.

[lbeachmike]

I'm at Win2K Service Pack 4, so no probs there.

My other 200 gig drive is happy, but that was pre-existing SATA 1.

I'll go reboot and check my BIOS settings.

It's a brand new board - ASRockDual939 - but perhaps when I pulled the CMOS battery last night I whacked an important default.

Thanks.

Mike

[lbeachmike]

The BIOS software that manages this particular SATA channel must support "48-bit LBA" model for drives larger than 128 GiB (137 GB); same for your OS.

Else, the drive still "thinks" it is the full capacity, it's only that the software can't reach beyond the addressable limit of the old (28-bit LBA) model.

I checked my BIOS settings and my BIOS simply has an option defined as "Large LBA" which is indeed enabled. I did find that it had the SATA II controller optioned for "IDE" and not "SATA" - however, when I make that change, I can no longer boot my machine. It then makes it half-way through the Windows splash screen and then I blue-screen :( :mad:

I also can see that the BIOS appears to recognize the drive as a 500 gig drive.

Where do I go from here?

Is the SATA/IDE setting the issue with the drive size?

Thanks.

Mike

[Peter M]

Nope, that just changes the programming model of the SATA interface from "IDE compatible" to "native PCI". As you already noticed, each requires its own driver model - the builtin IDE driver for the former, and a vendor-supplied driver for the latter mode.

You should check whether the required registry tweaks for 48-bit LBA mode are in place.

[Midknyte]

i figured it wasn't bios from what I pieced together from his other posts.

you may need to run the seagate seatools to configure the drive.

win2k is pretty long in the tooth, so you might want to just go to xp.

[lbeachmike]

I'm thinking about XP - just checked registry tweaks and one was missing, per guidance at Seagate's site. Also downloaded their tools. About to reboot.

Thanx guys.

mrk

[lbeachmike]

btw - Anybody know if the SATA II port on this puppy is hot-plugable? From my googling around, it appears not to be, but I have yet to find anything definitive from ASRock info.

My mobo is ASRock939-Dual

Tnx.

mrk

[lbeachmike]

Ok - I'm in shock. Support advice on a vendor's website which actually was easy and effective, not to mention the information actually coming from a Microsoft support page.

By adding the registry entry for EnableBigLba, the drive now knows who he is. Excellent!

Off to format him and copy a whole ton of stuff over from my piece of #@$!# LaCie .... that should take about the rest of the day :/

Still wondering if it's hot-plugable if anybody happens to know.

mrk

[lbeachmike]

Incidentally, when I set this new drive as SATA in my bios, I cannot boot up any longer. I have to have it set to IDE to boot my machine. I think this is because it is changing the addressing of my boot drive as a side effect, but unsure.

mrk

[Bigjakkstaffa]

Have you set SATA as the primary or secondary (i usually set it as Floppy followed by SATA followed by CD-ROM) boot device in the BIOS - also make sure your SATA drivers are fully installed in WIndows

--Jakk:t

[lbeachmike]

1. My SATA drivers are fully installed in Windows
2. I now currently have this drive, the SATA2 drive, first in the boot order

That all works. It boots on the new SATA2 drive.

However, in the IDE section of the bios, there is an option for the SATA2 port which can be set as either IDE or SATA. When this drive is set as IDE, I boot fine. When that setting is changed to SATA, I boot about 2/3 the way into the Win2K splash screen and then get Blue Screened with an error msg about this not being a bootable drive or something of the like (I can reboot and get the specific msg if needed.)

There's not a a lot of docs with this mobo, and the bios is actually very nicely done - but I'm unclear of the configuration difference. Common sense would tell me that this is a SATA drive and thus should be set as SATA .... ?

Also, there's a setting underneath for "Normal or Strong" - I have that set at the default of "Normal" - again, I'll have to reboot for the exact parameter name.

Does this info help to clarify?

Thanks.

Mike

[Peter M]

I told you above - the setting changes the programming model for the interface, thus, no boot if you change it after installing the OS.

"Normal" or "Strong" might be the signal drive strength onto the cable. Leave at "Normal" unless you're using ridiculously long cables.

[lbeachmike]

I told you above - the setting changes the programming model for the interface, thus, no boot if you change it after installing the OS.

Peter - Thanks for being so helpful, but unfortunately I don't understand the above explanation and need clarification. Specifically what I wanted to understand better is whether or not it's better to run it in IDE mode vs SATA mode - what is the difference? Is it faster in one mode than the other?

Just looking for the bottom line on getting my system setup optimally. I've learned a ton over the last few days, but as you know, there is an immense amount of info out there. Hell, I can tell you all about the cellular telephone network architecture in great detail, but PC architecture is not my specialty.

Thanks - I really appreciate the help everybody's given me here.

Mike

[Midknyte]

IDE means it is using IDE emulation so that you don't need to use the SATA f6 setup. if you don't have a floppy, then you need to use IDE. end of story.

[lbeachmike]

Is there a performance difference between IDE emulation and SATA config?

I can rig up my old floppy or pick one up if needed.

Thanks.

Mike

[Peter M]

No there isn't.

[lbeachmike]

Great - thanx.