48-bit LBA problem in 2kpro SP4

[minaret]

I've got an AOpen AX4SPE MAX mobo with a pair of 160Gb Seagate drives connected to Maxtor/Promise ATA 133 T2 controller. Both drives are cable select, on the same channel on the controller, and are using an 18" ATA133 ribbon. I'm having trouble getting access to the full 160GB on both of these drives. I've tried this with 2000pro and XPpro.

Under 2000pro, I installed the OS, patched it to service pack 4, installed the ATA controller, and then installed the drivers for the controller. I then inserted the removable bays that house the two 160's and booted the machine.

Under XPpro I installed the OS with the card in the machine already, then patched it to service pack 2, then inserted the drivebays.

In both situations, the ATA controller's BIOS reads the drives as 149GB on bootup. Both OS's allow me to format using NTFS, and explorer shows the capacity 160,039,239,680 bytes. However, when I copy data to the drives, the system freezes up once I hit approx 100GB (approx 106,000,000,000 bytes) on the drive...

Does anyone have any idea what might be causing this? I know about the MS bulletins on enabling LBA mode, but large drives are supposed to run fine under SP4 (win2k) and SP1+ (winXP). What am I missing here?

[Archer]

Have you rechecked for a firmware update for the Promise cards as I belive there is a problem that early versions had with large drives which was resolved with later editions?

[minaret]

Have you rechecked for a firmware update for the Promise cards as I belive there is a problem that early versions had with large drives which was resolved with later editions?

Well, the problem is that the card came with a Maxtor drive, but it's basically a promise card, has a promise chipset onboard, etc, but has Maxtor's logo painted on the PCB. The promise site says they don't support any cards sold under another manufacturer's name. Can you recommend a download location for a firmware update? The card currently has bios rev 2.20.0050.10 installed. The most current BIOS directly from promise is 2.20.0.15 which would suggest that the onboard BIOS is newer. But if it's a Maxtor BIOS it could be a slightly different numbering scheme, and might not be the newest. However, Maxtor's site only has a BIOS flash for the ATA100 card.

I'm going to rollback the drivers that did install and try reinstalling from diskette, the way their site recommends. Previously I installed the drivers from a cd-r disc. Don't know if source location should make a difference but will try and then post back.

If you know where to get an updated BIOS, either maxtor or promise, please post back.

[confus-ed]

..Does anyone have any idea what might be causing this? I know about the MS bulletins on enabling LBA mode, but large drives are supposed to run fine under SP4 (win2k) and SP1+ (winXP). What am I missing here?

Before you go nutz with firmware & such, you have sussed that you still have to turn it on (LBA support via the reg key), on any system that had these disks before you patched ? Its not exactly clearly put in the kb & its caught me before !

[Humilliation]

Get this driver from maxtor -

http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Ma...&downloadID=10

And download this patch for 48 bit LBA - (big drive enabler)

http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Ma...&downloadID=11

both of these files should help, they helped me with my 200GB HDD

You must use the driver from Maxtor with your Maxtor Controller card in order for windows to see the full content of the drive, if you use a promise driver it won't work, Maxtor's does.

After you install the controller card driver from Maxtor, once you reboot you should see that the controller card detects 156gb or something like that

[Humilliation]

The card currently has bios rev 2.20.0050.10 installed.

That's what it should be. No firmware update required, just use the controller card driver and registry patch I posted links to.

Also, only WinXP SP1 or W2K SP3 or above can see >137GBs but you must use the controller card driver I linked to and the registry patch I linked to in my last post.

[minaret]

That's what it should be. No firmware update required, just use the controller card driver and registry patch I posted links to.

Also, only WinXP SP1 or W2K SP3 or above can see >137GBs but you must use the controller card driver I linked to and the registry patch I linked to in my last post.

That is the driver version I'm installing, so no problem there.
Does that registry patch work under XP and win2000? Is that the registry patch described in MS Q305098 shown here?

It seems like once the drives were formatted in XP, I had full access to them. I have a total of 5 drives in pullout bays, between a win2000 pro machine and an xp pro machine. The drives are a 60, 80, 120, and two 160's.

The two 160's were formatted on the XP machine after the driver for the card was installed, and after SP1a was installed (SP1a first, then controller driver). I have full access to the 160's, and they read as 160,039,239,680 bytes. I filled one of them up to 700K remaining and had full access to the files through several reboots.

I have a 120Gb drive, originally formatted under 2000, that works fine in the XP machine.

I have an 80Gb, formatted under 2000, that doesn't load at all in XP. XP gives it a drive letter, but no access to the drive. Disk Manager shows the drive, but reads it as 7.06Gb or something very close to that.

The 60Gb drive (formatted under 2000) gets two drive letters in XP. One is the full size of the drive, with full access to the files. The other drive letter has no access, and doesn't show up at all in Disk Manager.

I'm starting to suspect that the two problem drives might have been formatted under win2000 SP2 and don't read properly in XP. Does this sound like a possible cause of a drive not being mounted properly by XP?

[Humilliation]

Does that registry patch work under XP and win2000? Is that the registry patch described in MS Q305098 shown here?

Yup, that's the patch that will modify the registry for you in 2K or XP.

I have an 80Gb, formatted under 2000, that doesn't load at all in XP. XP gives it a drive letter, but no access to the drive. Disk Manager shows the drive, but reads it as 7.06Gb or something very close to that.

That's peculiar, something ain't right there. W2K SP2 wouldn't have anything to do with XP not seeing the drive correctly, for if that were true, win xp wouldn't see the 120GB drive correctly either.

The 60Gb drive (formatted under 2000) gets two drive letters in XP. One is the full size of the drive, with full access to the files. The other drive letter has no access, and doesn't show up at all in Disk Manager.

That's odd too, have you jumbled your drives around on the ribbon cables since the install of the new 160GB drives? Sounds to me like your BIOS isn't seeing the drives correctly for some reason. I would go into the BIOS (System Setup) and set all drives to auto detect and make sure they were jumpered correctly before I pulled any more hair out about this dilemma. What's the placement of these drives in your system. What's on primary 0/1 and what's on secondary 0/1? What position is your CD-ROM? I know the 160s are on the UATA/133 controller card.

I'm starting to suspect that the two problem drives might have been formatted under win2000 SP2 and don't read properly in XP. Does this sound like a possible cause of a drive not being mounted properly by XP?

XP and 2K are both NTFS 5 so it shouldn't make a difference. I dual boot between the two with no problems.

[Humilliation]

And if the option is there in the BIOS, enable PCI IDE.

[minaret]

...have you jumbled your drives around on the ribbon cables since the install of the new 160GB drives? Sounds to me like your BIOS isn't seeing the drives correctly for some reason. I would go into the BIOS (System Setup) and set all drives to auto detect and make sure they were jumpered correctly before I pulled any more hair out about this dilemma. What's the placement of these drives in your system. What's on primary 0/1 and what's on secondary 0/1? What position is your CD-ROM? I know the 160s are on the UATA/133 controller card.

Haven't moved the drives around at all since I formatted the 160s. BIOS has always been set to auto-detect drives.

M1 is a Maxtor 40Gb
S1 is a DVD burner

M2 is a DVD reader
S2 empty

PCI IDE is enabled for both channels, and set to autodetect PIO/UDMA mode. (Windows shows all drives running under UDMA mode, so no problem there).