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| Author |
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Aaron
Guest
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 Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2003 1:46 am Post subject: Question on 250GB Maxtor Drive |
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Hey All,
Yesterday I received my new Maxtor Maxline II 250 GB drive from Newegg. I run WinXP
with SP1, and I made the registry change to support >137GB drives. Whenever I run
Thorough Format or Thorough Chkdsk, however, it freezes at about 60%, and just
never progresses any further. (Could theoretically be around the 137GB mark, but
WinXP doesn't relate any specific information when doing a surface scan) . I DLed
Maxtor's diagnostic utility that boots into DOS, but a surface scan didn't show any
problems. I started a low level format, grossly miscalculating how long that takes
on these big new drives, and its now about 2/3 of the way through after about 10
hours. If it helps, I'm running the drive on an ABIT Motherboard through the
highpoint controller, and the bios should be new enough.
Anyway, I need to know if I should be worried about the Format/Chkdsk surface scan
problem, as if I need to RMA the drive I should do it soon. Does anyone know if
this is expected behavior with WinXP Format and Chkdsk on a drive of this size?
Thanks very much for your advice,
-Aaron |
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Sleepy
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2003 2:08 am Post subject: Re: Question on 250GB Maxtor Drive |
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The 137GB drive limitation is a software, as well as a hardware limitation.
You may wan t to check with your motherboard manufacturer to see if the
board's IDE controllers (and your currently installed drivers) are
compatible with large capacity drives. If they are not, there may be a
software (or BIOS) update available to update the drivers for the IDE
controller on the motherboard. If this does not work, you can buy a PCI IDE
controller that supports the larger drives. In fact, a PCI IDE controller
came with my 160GB Western Digital hard drive. These are your basic
options. Don't fret, a PCI IDE controller card with a single IDE channel is
less than $30.
"Aaron" <amilchik@nospam.uchicago.edu> wrote in message
news:Ms_Pa.68$_4.17785@news.uchicago.edu...
| Quote: | Hey All,
Yesterday I received my new Maxtor Maxline II 250 GB drive from Newegg. I
run WinXP
with SP1, and I made the registry change to support >137GB drives.
Whenever I run
Thorough Format or Thorough Chkdsk, however, it freezes at about 60%, and
just
never progresses any further. (Could theoretically be around the 137GB
mark, but
WinXP doesn't relate any specific information when doing a surface scan) .
I DLed
Maxtor's diagnostic utility that boots into DOS, but a surface scan didn't
show any
problems. I started a low level format, grossly miscalculating how long
that takes
on these big new drives, and its now about 2/3 of the way through after
about 10
hours. If it helps, I'm running the drive on an ABIT Motherboard through
the
highpoint controller, and the bios should be new enough.
Anyway, I need to know if I should be worried about the Format/Chkdsk
surface scan
problem, as if I need to RMA the drive I should do it soon. Does anyone
know if
this is expected behavior with WinXP Format and Chkdsk on a drive of this
size?
Thanks very much for your advice,
-Aaron |
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Ed Light
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2003 2:52 am Post subject: Re: Question on 250GB Maxtor Drive |
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I think Maxtor has a downloadable driver for that?
Maybe it would work if you used two partitions?
--
Ed Light
Smiley :-/
MS Smiley :-\ |
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soccerfan
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2003 3:24 am Post subject: Re: Question on 250GB Maxtor Drive |
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faq 427 here might be of use http://maxtor.custhelp.com . and 10 hrs to
format seems way too long, since i formatted a 200gb western digital drive
in an hour.
"Aaron" <amilchik@nospam.uchicago.edu> wrote in message
news:Ms_Pa.68$_4.17785@news.uchicago.edu...
| Quote: | Hey All,
Yesterday I received my new Maxtor Maxline II 250 GB drive from Newegg. I
run WinXP
with SP1, and I made the registry change to support >137GB drives. [snip] |
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Aaron
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2003 4:09 am Post subject: Re: Question on 250GB Maxtor Drive |
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Was that 1 hour for a low level format? If so, then mine is _much_ slower, by an
order of magnitude.
Anyway I'm not sure I was clear. My PC doesn't hang, the drive is recognized fine,
seems to work, etc. The problem is simply that the surface scan performed by chkdsk
and format built into WinXP hangs after about 60% of the drive. If I split the disk
in 2, then it hangs after about 10% of the second disk.
Has anyone else run the built-in thorough chkdisk or thorough format on a 250GB or
200GB drive successfully? I just want to know if its supposed to work, and if my
drive is somehow bad. I don't want to RMA it if its a good drive. But if its bad I
want to send it back ASAP.
Thanks,
-Aaron
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage soccerfan <jackal3@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
: faq 427 here might be of use http://maxtor.custhelp.com . and 10 hrs to
: format seems way too long, since i formatted a 200gb western digital drive
: in an hour.
: "Aaron" <amilchik@nospam.uchicago.edu> wrote in message
: news:Ms_Pa.68$_4.17785@news.uchicago.edu...
:> Hey All,
:>
:> Yesterday I received my new Maxtor Maxline II 250 GB drive from Newegg. I
: run WinXP
:> with SP1, and I made the registry change to support >137GB drives. [snip] |
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Ed Light
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2003 4:26 am Post subject: Re: Question on 250GB Maxtor Drive |
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Maybe Maxtor has a downloadable utility that will do a scan.
--
Ed Light
Smiley :-/
MS Smiley :-\ |
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Mark Thurston
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2003 4:56 pm Post subject: Re: Question on 250GB Maxtor Drive |
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Hello all.
I have had to deal with just such a drive (Maxtor 250gb IDE) in the last
week or so.
We had to get one replaced because it actually had bad firmware and no BIOS,
or indeed Maxtors utility, would recognise it far enough to do anything with
it.
The replacement was fine however. I read a lot of articles on the Maxtor
site.... basically it is imperetive with these >137gb drives that you use
proper maxtor utilities rather than MS format / test programs.
Maxtor Partitioning Utility (MaxBlast 3)
http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/maxblast3.htm
Maxtor Diagnostics (PowerMax)
http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/powermax.htm
Maxtor BigDrive Enabler (Windows)
http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/big_drive_enabler.htm
Now I understand that you have formatted this drive, to the full 250gb. Good
for you, but for future reference, if you use Maxblast, it installs a
low-level (pre-os boot) driver on the drive, and then ANY BIOS pretty much
can use the drive and it works at full capacity. I think it might also solve
your probs with the MS utilities. Then of course, you need to install the
"big drive enabler" too, as you've done.
For diagnostics, I'd recommend you use PowerMax - it'll tell you all that
you need to know about the drive's reliability and performance - and it
handles these larger drives just fine.
Personally, right now I think I'd be happier doing a RAID-0 with 2x 120gb
drives - but thats a personal choice.
I hope the info helps.
Mark.
"Ed Light" <nobody@nobody.there> wrote in message
news:vh169l2l1205c9@corp.supernews.com...
| Quote: | Maybe Maxtor has a downloadable utility that will do a scan.
--
Ed Light
Smiley :-/
MS Smiley :-\
|
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Markeau
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Jul 14, 2003 1:11 am Post subject: Re: Question on 250GB Maxtor Drive |
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"Mark Thurston" <thurstonet@nospam.eclipse.co.uk> wrote in message
news:1058097254.937366@ananke.eclipse.net.uk
| Quote: | The replacement was fine however. I read a lot of articles on the
Maxtor site.... basically it is imperetive with these >137gb drives
that you use proper maxtor utilities rather than MS format / test
programs.
|
No problems using native XPpro disk utilities to partition and format
2 Maxtor DM+ 200GB drives (for NTFS) ... just gotta make sure >137GB
support is properly enabled in XPpro and the pc's bios and/or IDE
controller also support >137GB. Also no problems using Partition
Magic ... in fact I've never used any of the Maxtor utils on these
200GB's. |
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Folkert Rienstra
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Jul 14, 2003 3:28 am Post subject: Re: Question on 250GB Maxtor Drive |
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"Mark Thurston" <thurstonet@nospam.eclipse.co.uk> wrote in message news:1058097254.937366@ananke.eclipse.net.uk...
| Quote: | Hello all.
I have had to deal with just such a drive (Maxtor 250gb IDE) in the last
week or so.
We had to get one replaced because it actually had bad firmware and no BIOS,
or indeed Maxtors utility, would recognise it far enough to do anything with it.
The replacement was fine however. I read a lot of articles on the Maxtor
site.... basically it is imperetive with these >137gb drives that you use
proper maxtor utilities rather than MS format / test programs.
|
Nope, it is not imperative.
Maxblast should even be avoided unless you have no choice.
| Quote: |
Maxtor Partitioning Utility (MaxBlast 3)
http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/maxblast3.htm
Maxtor Diagnostics (PowerMax)
http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/powermax.htm
Maxtor BigDrive Enabler (Windows)
http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/big_drive_enabler.htm
Now I understand that you have formatted this drive, to the full 250gb. Good
for you, but for future reference, if you use Maxblast, it installs a
low-level (pre-os boot) driver on the drive, and then ANY BIOS pretty much
can use the drive and it works at full capacity. I think it might also solve
your probs with the MS utilities. Then of course, you need to install the
"big drive enabler" too, as you've done.
For diagnostics, I'd recommend you use PowerMax - it'll tell you all that
you need to know about the drive's reliability and performance - and it
handles these larger drives just fine.
Personally, right now I think I'd be happier doing a RAID-0 with 2x 120gb
drives - but thats a personal choice.
I hope the info helps.
Mark.
"Ed Light" <nobody@nobody.there> wrote in message news:vh169l2l1205c9@corp.supernews.com...
Maybe Maxtor has a downloadable utility that will do a scan.
--
Ed Light
Smiley :-/
MS Smiley :-\
|
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Wouter
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Jul 14, 2003 1:33 pm Post subject: Re: Question on 250GB Maxtor Drive |
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"Aaron" <amilchik@nospam.uchicago.edu> wrote in message
news:%y0Qa.69$_4.18018@news.uchicago.edu...
| Quote: | Was that 1 hour for a low level format? If so, then mine is _much_
slower, by an
order of magnitude.
Anyway I'm not sure I was clear. My PC doesn't hang, the drive is
recognized fine,
seems to work, etc. The problem is simply that the surface scan performed
by chkdsk
and format built into WinXP hangs after about 60% of the drive. If I
split the disk
in 2, then it hangs after about 10% of the second disk.
Has anyone else run the built-in thorough chkdisk or thorough format on a
250GB or
200GB drive successfully? I just want to know if its supposed to work,
and if my
drive is somehow bad. I don't want to RMA it if its a good drive. But if
its bad I
want to send it back ASAP.
Thanks,
-Aaron
|
I don't have Windows XP, so I can't confirm anything, but I think it's
highly unlikely that the drive is bad. I won't trust Windows utilities for
this big drives. There are enough harddisk limits and bugs in Windows 95 and
98 to believe that the scandisk utility of WinXP doesn't support the large
drives very well too.
You're new drive is probably "SMART", so use a utility to check the status
of the drive. The harddisk can perform self-tests, and the program may give
you a RMA code if the drive is defective.
For more information about the format/chkdsk problem, I recommend that you
ask this question in a Windows XP newsgroup and/or check the Microsoft
Knowledge Base. |
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Strontium
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Jul 14, 2003 1:56 pm Post subject: Re: Question on 250GB Maxtor Drive |
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-
Wouter stood up, at show-n-tell, and said:
| Quote: | "Aaron" <amilchik@nospam.uchicago.edu> wrote in message
news:%y0Qa.69$_4.18018@news.uchicago.edu...
Was that 1 hour for a low level format? If so, then mine is _much_
slower, by an order of magnitude.
Anyway I'm not sure I was clear. My PC doesn't hang, the drive is
recognized fine, seems to work, etc. The problem is simply that the
surface scan performed by chkdsk and format built into WinXP hangs
after about 60% of the drive. If I split the disk in 2, then it
hangs after about 10% of the second disk.
Has anyone else run the built-in thorough chkdisk or thorough format
on a 250GB or 200GB drive successfully? I just want to know if its
supposed to work, and if my drive is somehow bad. I don't want to
RMA it if its a good drive. But if its bad I want to send it back
ASAP.
Thanks,
-Aaron
I don't have Windows XP, so I can't confirm anything, but I think it's
highly unlikely that the drive is bad. I won't trust Windows
utilities for this big drives. There are enough harddisk limits and
bugs in Windows 95 and 98 to believe that the scandisk utility of
WinXP doesn't support the large drives very well too.
You're new drive is probably "SMART", so use a utility to check the
status of the drive. The harddisk can perform self-tests, and the
program may give you a RMA code if the drive is defective.
For more information about the format/chkdsk problem, I recommend
that you ask this question in a Windows XP newsgroup and/or check the
Microsoft Knowledge Base.
|
Winblows supports up to 9TB. It's, most likely a hardware limitation. OP
needs to contact their motherboard mfg. Sounds as if a BIOS flash, is in
order. I love to blame Winblows for a lot of crap, too. Just don't think
that's the case, here.
--
Strontium
"Shortcuts are self-defeating. Mean. If you cannot do it,
clean, you'll never reach your reward..." - 311 |
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Wouter
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Jul 14, 2003 2:17 pm Post subject: Re: Question on 250GB Maxtor Drive |
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|
"Strontium" <abuse@your...isp.com> wrote in message
news:IM6cnYIYIYXc7Y-iXTWJkg@giganews.com...
| Quote: | Wouter stood up, at show-n-tell, and said:
I don't have Windows XP, so I can't confirm anything, but I think it's
highly unlikely that the drive is bad. I won't trust Windows
utilities for this big drives. There are enough harddisk limits and
bugs in Windows 95 and 98 to believe that the scandisk utility of
WinXP doesn't support the large drives very well too.
You're new drive is probably "SMART", so use a utility to check the
status of the drive. The harddisk can perform self-tests, and the
program may give you a RMA code if the drive is defective.
For more information about the format/chkdsk problem, I recommend
that you ask this question in a Windows XP newsgroup and/or check the
Microsoft Knowledge Base.
Winblows supports up to 9TB. It's, most likely a hardware limitation. OP
needs to contact their motherboard mfg. Sounds as if a BIOS flash, is in
order. I love to blame Winblows for a lot of crap, too. Just don't think
that's the case, here.
|
I didn't mean that the Operating System (kernel?) doesn't support large
harddisks, but that there may be programs that contain certain bugs which
result in limited harddisk support (for example: the fdisk utility from
Windows 98 doesn't support harddisks greater than 64GB due to a bug, even
though the Operating System itself does support larger drives).
I can imagine that the format and scandisk utitlities of Windows XP contain
such bugs too, which causes his problems. That's why I referred to the
Windows XP newsgroups and MS Knowledge Base.
Aaron wrote that the drive is recognized fine, so a BIOS problem seems
unlikely. I only hope that he means by "recognized fine" that the BIOS
reports the drive as 250GB, and not only displays its name correctly :-/
If it's a BIOS limition, there are two options: 1) computer does not boot
(which is not the case), or 2) drivename is reported correctly on the first
screen, but the drivesize is displayed wrong on the second screen. In both
cases, a BIOS upgrade or workaround will solve the problem.
Wouter |
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Strontium
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Jul 14, 2003 2:34 pm Post subject: Re: Question on 250GB Maxtor Drive |
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Wouter stood up, at show-n-tell, and said:
| Quote: | "Strontium" <abuse@your...isp.com> wrote in message
news:IM6cnYIYIYXc7Y-iXTWJkg@giganews.com...
Wouter stood up, at show-n-tell, and said:
I don't have Windows XP, so I can't confirm anything, but I think
it's highly unlikely that the drive is bad. I won't trust Windows
utilities for this big drives. There are enough harddisk limits and
bugs in Windows 95 and 98 to believe that the scandisk utility of
WinXP doesn't support the large drives very well too.
You're new drive is probably "SMART", so use a utility to check the
status of the drive. The harddisk can perform self-tests, and the
program may give you a RMA code if the drive is defective.
For more information about the format/chkdsk problem, I recommend
that you ask this question in a Windows XP newsgroup and/or check
the Microsoft Knowledge Base.
Winblows supports up to 9TB. It's, most likely a hardware
limitation. OP needs to contact their motherboard mfg. Sounds as
if a BIOS flash, is in order. I love to blame Winblows for a lot of
crap, too. Just don't think that's the case, here.
I didn't mean that the Operating System (kernel?) doesn't support
large harddisks, but that there may be programs that contain certain
bugs which result in limited harddisk support (for example: the fdisk
utility from Windows 98 doesn't support harddisks greater than 64GB
due to a bug, even though the Operating System itself does support
larger drives).
I can imagine that the format and scandisk utitlities of Windows XP
contain such bugs too, which causes his problems. That's why I
referred to the Windows XP newsgroups and MS Knowledge Base.
Aaron wrote that the drive is recognized fine, so a BIOS problem seems
unlikely. I only hope that he means by "recognized fine" that the BIOS
reports the drive as 250GB, and not only displays its name correctly
:-/
If it's a BIOS limition, there are two options: 1) computer does not
boot (which is not the case), or 2) drivename is reported correctly
on the first screen, but the drivesize is displayed wrong on the
second screen. In both cases, a BIOS upgrade or workaround will solve
the problem.
|
OK, so if your drive is being recognized (correct size, etc...),
correctly, then I would have to say that it's time go give up win9x :)
--
Strontium
"Shortcuts are self-defeating. Mean. If you cannot do it,
clean, you'll never reach your reward..." - 311 |
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Folkert Rienstra
Guest
|
| Posted: Mon Jul 14, 2003 7:05 pm Post subject: Re: Question on 250GB Maxtor Drive |
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"Wouter" <no@spam.please> wrote in message news:betskr$8ju$1@reader08.wxs.nl...
| Quote: | "Strontium" <abuse@your...isp.com> wrote in message news:IM6cnYIYIYXc7Y-iXTWJkg@giganews.com...
Wouter stood up, at show-n-tell, and said:
I don't have Windows XP, so I can't confirm anything, but I think it's
highly unlikely that the drive is bad. I won't trust Windows
utilities for this big drives. There are enough harddisk limits and
bugs in Windows 95 and 98 to believe that the scandisk utility of
WinXP doesn't support the large drives very well too.
You're new drive is probably "SMART", so use a utility to check the
status of the drive. The harddisk can perform self-tests, and the
program may give you a RMA code if the drive is defective.
For more information about the format/chkdsk problem, I recommend
that you ask this question in a Windows XP newsgroup and/or check the
Microsoft Knowledge Base.
Winblows supports up to 9TB. It's, most likely a hardware limitation. OP
needs to contact their motherboard mfg. Sounds as if a BIOS flash, is in
order. I love to blame Winblows for a lot of crap, too. Just don't think
that's the case, here.
I didn't mean that the Operating System (kernel?) doesn't support large
harddisks, but that there may be programs that contain certain bugs which
result in limited harddisk support (for example: the fdisk utility from
Windows 98 doesn't support harddisks greater than 64GB due to a bug, even
though the Operating System itself does support larger drives).
I can imagine that the format and scandisk utitlities of Windows XP contain
such bugs too, which causes his problems. That's why I referred to the
Windows XP newsgroups and MS Knowledge Base.
Aaron wrote that the drive is recognized fine, so a BIOS problem seems
unlikely. I only hope that he means by "recognized fine" that the BIOS
reports the drive as 250GB, and not only displays its name correctly :-/
If it's a BIOS limition, there are two options:
|
There are more, depending on how the bug works out.
| Quote: | 1) computer does not boot (which is not the case),
|
That is a rather ugly one, whether that is a hang in POST or otherwise.
That should not happen just because of a capacity mismatch.
| Quote: | or 2) drivename is reported correctly on the first
screen, but the drivesize is displayed wrong on the second screen.
|
That may not effect anything other than the use in DOS or booting
to a partition located above the limit.
| Quote: | In both cases, a BIOS upgrade or workaround will solve the problem.
Wouter
|
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Eric Gisin
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Jul 14, 2003 7:53 pm Post subject: Re: Question on 250GB Maxtor Drive |
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Nonsense. Win 2K/XP has been tested with drives up to 2TB and had no problems.
The only limit so far has been the legacy ATA 28-bit LBA (137GB). If you have
a problem here, then your IDE driver is broken.
You don't want to use 250GB volumes under DOS 7/8 or Win 98, you are right at
the FAT32 limit.
"Wouter" <no@spam.please> wrote in message
news:betq0s$7q8$1@reader08.wxs.nl...
|
| I don't have Windows XP, so I can't confirm anything, but I think it's
| highly unlikely that the drive is bad. I won't trust Windows utilities for
| this big drives. There are enough harddisk limits and bugs in Windows 95 and
| 98 to believe that the scandisk utility of WinXP doesn't support the large
| drives very well too.
| You're new drive is probably "SMART", so use a utility to check the status
| of the drive. The harddisk can perform self-tests, and the program may give
| you a RMA code if the drive is defective.
|
| For more information about the format/chkdsk problem, I recommend that you
| ask this question in a Windows XP newsgroup and/or check the Microsoft
| Knowledge Base.
|
|
| |
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