I am going to upgrade my hardrive on my Micron PC running Win ME. I currently have a 40Gb drive that is out of room. I'd like to go with a 200 Gb Maxtor. Aside from the ATA 133 upgrade issue (I know I'll need a PCI card to adapt it to my ATA 100 MB) I don't know if I'll run into a problem when I partition it. My plan was to partition it for a 135 Gb primary DOS partition with the remainder in a secondary partition. Can anyone tell me if I will be presented with 137 Gb when I run FDISK or will all 200 Gb show up? Is the 137Gb limit on drive size or partition size? Am I relegated to getting a 120 Gb harddrive and just living with it or can I partition a large drive down the way I want? I searched on this issue and couldn't find anything here that addressed this specifically. Any assistance would be great. Thanks!

In addition to hardware support for 48-bit LBA (this allows for a partition size greater than 137gig) you need a software patch to the OS. I know these patches are available for Windows 2000/XP, but I have not seen any for earlier versions of Windows. I suggest you thoroughly check with Microsoft and the drive manufacturer for a ME patch, before you buy.

This may help. http://support.intel.com/support/chipsets/iaa/sb/CS-009299.htm

I have just installed a 160Gb HDD under XP, without SP1 or enabling 48-bit LBA, my advice is try it out and don't be too easily worried with all the mumbo-jumbo. This advice will be useful if you have problems with the set-up after installation. Give it a go, it'll probably work, even in ME!!. Thanks for your help John

In addition to hardware support for 48-bit LBA (this allows for a partition size greater than 137gig) you need a software patch to the OS. So, hwood...I'm assuming the hardware of which you speak is the ATA/133 PCI Adapter Card that is required on systems running ATA/100 drives? If so, I've got that covered but the patch issue....not so much. I've got my Win ME OS updated as much as can be done via Microsoft Windows Update. As for the chipset, Francis...it's listed as "VIA Technologies Inc VT82C694X Apollo Pro 133A System Controller" in the SISoft Sandra utility. So the Intel utility is a no go. Going by your answers I'm taking it that the drive will be recognized as 137Mb right off the bat by fdisk. I was also wondering about the MaxBlast software that comes with Maxtor drives. I seem to recall some years back that it was usefull in overcoming the old 500Mb drive limit. Perhaps they've changed it to help with the 137Mb limit? Any experience in that area? Thanks for your answers. I appreciate it. This forum is the best place for answers. Bar none.

Thanks John. I think I will give a go. Sometimes you've just got to have that "f" it attitude. Worst case scenario anyway is getting a couple of 120 Gb drives and Master/Slaving them. Could be the way to go if I can't work out the large drive issues. Cheers.