Size Does Count?

Question

I was online today with a Dell technician as he was assisting me with my hard drive disappearing from my PC (earlier post). Anyways, one of the reasons why my PC didn't see my new hard drive was because it was a 200GB hard drive. He told me that my Dell Dimension 8200 can't see it because it's a big hard drive. Never heard of that, is this true? Before I called him, I installed WinXP on it, and it installed fine. I was browsing around the hard drive for about 5 minutes, restarted it and it was gone. So it saw it once, I was able to install WinXP and then it was gone. Does the size of a hard drive really matter, and if it does, what's controlling the size blockage? motherboard? processor? please advise thanks

Answer 1

Yes, size matters. You see, Windows XP can see a drive that big, when the C drive has been formatted with the NTFS file system. If you are using FAT32, you are DOOMED.

Some external drives are formatted by the manufacturer with a non-standard FAT32 format. These are not really compatible with all systems. If you are planning to use that external drive with only a Windows XP system, then consider reformatting it as NTFS.

Good luck and Happy Computing!

Answer 2

Well the Dell guy is wrong, big surprise. I had to research this a little bit, but I did find out the answer. The barrier he is talking about is the 137GB barrier, which did exist. The barrier was broken with ATA-6, which in fact the Dimension 8200 uses. As for the operating system, the original XP didn't support over 137, but the as long as your have SP2 installed, that should not be a problem. Besides all of that, even if you couldn't recognize more than a 137GB hard drive, it would not cause your computer to not recognize the hard drive at all, just not recognize the space over 137GB.

Answer 3

Windows XP WITHOUT service pack#1 cannot see more than a 136GB drive.

If you install SP#1 or #2 than it will be able to see your whole 200GB.

So, Windows should at least be seeing that 136GB, so since it's dissapearing I would assume there is something wrong with the drive , or with the bios or with the connector on the motherboard.

The only way to install your whole 200GB in 1 shot, would be to install windows XP with SP#2 on it, or if you don't you can create a slipstreamed version by including SP#2 in it.