how to format 200 gig w/ XP to cure 137 gig limit. No op given for 2nd partition during process?

Answer 1

XP SP1 will support drives over 137GB but you must have a 48-bit LBA-compatible BIOS.

If so, then follow this link for details :

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb%3Ben-us%3B303013

This is an issue with your motherboard...not with XP.

regards,
Philip

Answer 2

This is an interesting one because the limitation you face is in your bios recognition, not the OS.
There are two surefire ways around your issue, and one additional option.
The first is to use a utility such as ez-drive which places a marker on the boot sector telling the OS what the accurate size of the drive is regardless of what the bios reports.

The second method is to install the drive into a machine which can see the entire volume, create an NTFS partition there, then transfer the drive back to the original machine.
This is tricky because cylinder/head/sector information on the target machine must match what the formatting machine reported and sometimes has to be set manually, but as long as the boot sector is reported as the same location, the OS will see the full reported volume and use it regardless of what the bios reports.
I once used this method years ago to install a 20 gig drive to a machine running on a 486 platform without ez-drive.

The downshot to this method is that should you ever remove the partition you cannot recreate it without the second machine and the whole process must be repeated.

The final possibility (not so much a method) is to look for a bios update which may or may not increase the recognition of possible drives.

In summary method one is the easiest, method two is the most reliable once on there, and the bios update may work but as with all bios updates should something happen during the flash procedure you are looking at a mainboard or bios replacement.