Village idiot needs help AGAIN!

[Drizzid]

Yes, it's hard to believe but TG's local village idiot needs some help with his upgrade. Actually I need help trying to figure out how to get my HDD to format.

Now Windows XP can only recognize HDs up to 137 gigs and in order to get it to recognize the larger drive sizes you have to go into the raid function when installing XP. Now I have done all of this and for some reason I can't get XP to format my 250gig hard drive . I have tried using different raid drivers from the motherboard manufacturer and I have downloaded these drivers from the Internet just in case the floppy was damaged. I have used 2 different HD ( I bought 2, one for me and one for my wife's computer) and neither will format . I have combed over my bios to see if I have missed anything that needs to be enabled and I have gotten no results so, if anyone has any thoughts or advice the village idiot would most greatly appreciate the help since his computer has been down for almost a week now and the jones are starting to set in

[jmaker]

What disk are you trying to install Windows from? Is it from a Windows disk not containing Service Pack 2? I think you need that for Windows to recognize the larger hard drives. If you don't you can always slipstream SP2 with XP. What that means is you can create a new Windows installation disk with Service Pack 2 already embedded and even all security updates to date. I don't know how to do the latter but here is a site that explains how to create the new slipstreamed disk. Don't worry it's not that hard.

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase...slipstream.asp

[Drizzid]

My version of XP Home doesn't have any of the service packs included so this might be worth a try. Thanks J

Edit: Only one problem I don't have enough existing HD space on this computer to do the slipstream CD
Man I can't win with this thing

Edit #2: I don't knowif this matters but I can see that XP knows the hard drive is bigger than 137gigs. It shows 238464mbs but it won't format it to ntsf. If I try to do a quick format it goes to %20 then %100 and gives me a fail to format message. If I do a standard or long format it will go all the way through the process and looks like it is formatting and then it gives me the fail to format message.

Thanks again for the help

[=Sarc=]

I never encountered this problem with my 250GB drive when installing WinXP (no SP slipstreamed). It may be that I partitioned my drive into two partitions. I'm not sure if that's how you want to set up your drive but it's an option.

[Drizzid]

Ok I have now tried to create a partition which I did. I created a 228gig partiction and a 10gig partition which I was successful in doing (whoo hoo I actually did something right and it worked) but I can't format either partition

Now what, anyone else have any thoughts

Oh by the way here is my specs
AMD FX 55 2.6gig San Diego
Abit AN8 32x mobo SLI
2gig Corsair TwinX 184 pin DDR 400 Dual channel
Seagate 250gb SATA 16mb cache
2 7800GT EVGA 256mb GFX cards

[WhiskeySix]

Hmm... why not just make it two 125MB partitions? or two 100MB's and one 50MB or whatever...

[amu107.9]

Originally Posted by WhiskeySix

Hmm... why not just make it two 125MB partitions? or two 100MB's and one 50MB or whatever...

Dang someone beat me to the punch. Also, would it be possible to just take your computer to your work? Possibly meddling with it on your lunch break.

[Drizzid]

Hmm... why not just make it two 125MB partitions? or two 100MB's and one 50MB or whatever...

The size of the partition shouldn't really matter but I was trying to see if making a partition would allow me to format the drive. So I created a large and a small partition to see if one or the other of the partitions would format.

As for taking to work and working on it during lunch that would be tough since I work for Fedex and I am in a truck all day long

[=Sarc=]

If WinXP has trouble with >137GB, then wouldn't formatting a partition >137GB be a problem as well? I'm trying to remember what I set mine up as. It's definitely two partitions and I think the C: partition is 40GB so my D: partition must be >137GB. I'm not sure why there would be a problem for you formatting the drive. I definitely don't have SP1 or SP2 slipstreamed with my XP disk. Perhaps there's a difference that I'm using XP Pro.

[Dick Blonov]

Try this from seagate. This allows you to format the drive before installing XP.

Or this from Western Digital (never tried on a Seagate drive myself).

Or this from Maxtor


DB

[Drizzid]

Well first let me say thanks to everyone who tried to help, I really appreciate the time you took to help.

I finally got it done and the drive is formatted to 237gigs Woo hooo. It was a very frustrating experience but I did learn a few things which is always a good.

I think my problem was I turned RAID on which was a mistake because I wasn't actually setting up a RAID. So after going through every BIOS function I got the drive to recognize all 237gigs, format it to NTFS, install windows. So again thanks to everyone who tried to help