137gb limitation

**ilovetheusers** · December 23rd, 2004, 09:19 AM

Question for those of you who have run into this.

XP has a limitation of 137gb for hard drives pre service pack one. My edition of XP is not the one with SP1 bundled into it. I am thinking of buying a 250gb drive.

Question: Is the 137gb limit the limit to the entire drive size that XP sees or is it the limit for partitions that XP can create?

From what I've read it looks like that's the max size drive it sees and not just the partitions. Just looking for conformation.

**InTheWayBoy** · December 23rd, 2004, 09:52 AM

I've done this before:

1. Install XP on a parition smaller than 137GB on the 250GB HD

2. Install SP1

3. Create more partitions using the newly found extra space

As far as using it without SP1, you can...just won't see more than 137GB of course.

**ilovetheusers** · December 23rd, 2004, 09:57 AM

Originally Posted by InTheWayBoy

I've done this before:

1. Install XP on a parition smaller than 137GB on the 250GB HD

2. Install SP1

3. Create more partitions using the newly found extra space

As far as using it without SP1, you can...just won't see more than 137GB of course.

OK, thank you.

**RejectionMan** · December 23rd, 2004, 10:07 AM

here is a methods by which you cant make it seek the entire thing:

If you have Ghost or another disk cloneing software that supports NTFS 5, large drives, and partition resizeing.

create and install to a small partition (realy small, or even to a old IDE disk but begenough fo XP and SP2).
Intstall SP2
clone the partition to the new big drive, resizing to use all of it.

see this post on another group: here

or using an exisign system with a CD burner you can create an OEM like windows CD from an original WInXP CD (one that does not already include updates, it will tell you if you try). here