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This is a tough one...
I have a Fujitsu notebook. About six years old. I was running XP SP3 on a 40gb drive.
I replaced the standard 40gb drive, with a new Samsung 160gb drive.
I installed XP SP3 on the new 160gb drive... everything works normally. Used it for a while then decided to delete that, and install Windows 7... but the Windows 7 installation was taking hours and hours. It seemed disk access was very slow. Then it appeared to just hang. I gave up.
So I removed the new 160gb drive, and fitted the old 40gb drive. Tried Windows 7 again... the installation went very fast and smoothly. Took about 30 minutes. Windows 7 itself ran beautifully... faster than XP! No errors and no problems.
Removed that drive, and refitted the 160gb drive. Tried reinstalling Windows 7 again, several times, but no luck. Just crawled along, and never finished.
I tried using different BIOS settings too, because I noticed the BIOS was incorrectly reporting the 160gb drive as only 137gb.
But don't forget XP installed and ran perfectly on this drive. Surely Window 7 should be more intelligent?! If XP could install easily, why can't Windows 7 install???
And why did it install so easily on the 40gb drive??!
I have to conclude that Windows 7 does not like something about the new 160gb drive.
PLEASE, if you have an idea, let's hear it. I'm about ready to go crazy!
Split the hard drive into two partitions. Make one partition as big as the 137gb limit, and make the other partition the rest of the hard drive space. You can find special software for partitioning drives all over the internet.
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Wait, because Windows 7 is buggy and cannot accept drives +137 gig, you should partition ? Are you serious ?
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"Wait, because Windows 7 is buggy and cannot accept drives +137 gig, you should partition ? Are you serious ?"
huh? Not sure what is going on here, but Win 7 can certainly accept "+137gig" and is not buggy, at least in that respect.
...if it ain't broke, then you ain't having fun...
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Seeker2: Windows 7 can indeed handle drives bigger than 137gb. It's the computer's BIOS that lacks the support for it.
tvc: Is there a problem with it?
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I dunno what's going on on your end...
I have sitting right next to me as I type this; a Compaq notebook equipped with a 160GB Samsung -- HM160HI -- ATA hard drive that's running Windows 7 Ultimate perfectly fine. It came with Windows 7 Basic & I had no problem upgrading it to Windows 7 Ultimate.
Although, the disk is partitioned into 4 volumes & none is anywhere near 137GB, it wasn't because of any disk/partition size limitation.
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Thanks to everybody for taking the time to think about my problem. I appreciate it!
With regard to partitions... I tried a few different variations. Still same results.
I even tried the Samsung Drive Overlay program, but same results again.
By the way, I am using Killdisk to zero the drive between installs. I don't want to confuse the issue with old partitions on the drive.
I realise there is a problem about the BIOS, because it cannot see the full 160gb, but XP installs fine, and can see the full size.
Please post any thoughts!
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Sabertooth: Your machine must have originally come with that hard drive and thus is able to support it by default. Cordless's machine orginally came with a 40gb hard drive, which must have upped the chances for a lack of 137gb support.
cordless: I guess you could just have one partition up to the 137gb and leave the rest unpartitioned. Also, I had a thought that the problem you are having with Windows 7 may not be caused by the hard drive. Do you know what your machine's specifications are (processor speed and ram and all that) and do you know what Windows 7's requirements are? I looked on eBay and most of the desktop and laptop machines on there with 40gb hard drives don't have enough ram to support Windows 7. So maybe your machine doesn't have enough ram for Windows 7? It requires at least 1gb.
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Why it does that I don't know. I would suggest creating a small partition (say 20GB) on your 160GB drive. Put that in the laptop, and install Windows 7 onto it. If it installs, you can use any of a number of programs to expand that partition to the full 160GB.
The second thing you could do is take the the 40GB drive (with windows 7 installed) and "image" it to the 160GB drive.
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"Sabertooth: Your machine must have originally come with that hard drive and thus is able to support it by default. Cordless's machine orginally came with a 40gb hard drive, which must have upped the chances for a lack of 137gb support."
The above is only partly true:
While I agree with you that the largest HDD common to notebooks right about when the OP purchased his laptop was 40-60GB, you seem to have overlooked the OP's statement -- "I installed XP SP3 on the new 160gb drive... everything works normally." -- emphasizing the OP's machine's ability to detect & enumerate the 160GB correctly.
If the machine is unable to support large disks, it wouldn't matter if the OS was XP or Windows 7.
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Wow, thanks for the suggestions! Let's run through them...
Partitioned 160gb drive to about 130gb only, and did not partition the rest of the drive. but same situation.
Partitioned 160gb drive to about 30gb only, and did not partition the rest of the drive. Same again.
My laptop's specifications are a little low... mobile AMD Athlon™XP processor 1600+ and 768MB ram. But don't forget I could install Windows 7 very rapidly on this same laptop, but with 40gb drive. And Windows 7 on this laptop was actually running faster than my desktop pc!
Drive image suggestion.... I fitted 40gb drive to laptop, installed Windows 7 (easily! How frustrating!), then used "Macrium Reflect" and created an image to USB stick. Removed 40gb drive, installed 160gb drive. Then I copied across the drive image. Actually it copied across very quickly, so it seems the 160gb drive doesn't have a communication problem?
Anyway, I rebooted... Windows 7 started loading... VERY slowly... but even after an hour it was still stuck on the 1st screen. (the screen that appears after a few seconds with a flashing windows logo).And yes, with XP SP3 installed on this 160gb drive, the full 160gb was available in Windows. Even though only 137gb shows up in BIOS. I don't understand this though.
Anyway, if you have any more ideas, I'm listening! Seriously, thanks for your time. And sorry for the long post, but I really want to sort this out!
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Well... I found the problem.
The culprit is the ALi M5229 IDE controller. Seems my 160gb drive is switching over to PIO mode during Windows 7 installation. More information http://winhlp.com/node/10#comment-970
One fix for earlier Windows is to install this driver http://wwwcsif.cs.ucdavis.edu/~leeey/a7a266/IDE4008.exe
The drive will be emulated as scsi.Another fix is to use Samsung ESTOOL, available http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/support/utilities/ES_Tool.html and change the size by “Set Max Address”.
Change the Target LBA
From: 312581808 (152627mb)
To: 268435000 (131071mb)More information from "AllenAhl" http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=264209&page=4 about halfway down the page.
Anyway, I used the second method (using Samsung ESTOOL) and set my 160gb drive to only 137gb. And Windows 7 installed beautifully!
I've lost 20gb, but it's ok.
***WAIT*** I just checked my newly installed Windows 7... it can see 152625MB! What? That's 160 GB right? Well, it looks like everything is now fine. The new drive is running in UDMA Mode 5.
Thanks very much to everybody who gave their time and ideas!
Maybe tomorrow I'll try filling the drive with more data to see what happens. But for the moment I'm exhausted! And the laptop is running fast!
Cheers
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This has nothing to do with Windows 7.
It is a bios issue with your computer.
Windows 7 fully supports 48 bit lba.
There are plenty of ways around the 48 bit issue.
Playing to the angels
Les Paul (1915-2009)
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