I recently installed a new 200GB HD in my system. My system already had a 60 GB and 10 GB IDEs and a 200 GB SATA drives. When I installed this drive and restarted my system, XP hangs on the start-up screen with the moving bar. The BIOS detects the drive. I updated the BIOS, tried different configs in the BIOS, and even tried a PCI IDE card, but I still get problem. My CPU speed is 3.4 and memory is 1GB. Does anyone know of solution, a work around or know if XP Pro has any limitations with the amount of HD space? Abomb1111

How do you have the drive connected physically?

Yes, It shows up in the BIOS. I should note that I have tried every jumper setting the drive has and even no jumper to see what that would do, but I get the same result. In addition, I tried it on different IDE channels to see what happens. Same result. Abomb1111

What is your XP version? Is it Gold? SP1? or SP2? Does your system support 48 Bit LBA mode? What capacity does the BIOS report for the HDD? Does your system support hard drives greater than 137 GB? This may be the problem. However, as you say you already have a 200 GB HDD makes me think it may not be. Then again it may still be the case if your current 200 GB HDD has not been used past the 137 GB mark. To use HDDs greater than 137 GB in size you need your motherboard, BIOS and OS to all support 48 Bit LBA mode and you also need to enable 48 Bit LBA mode in your OS. Visit my website (Homepage link) and read up the section titled "Working with Large Hard Drives (Barriers and Limits)" to satisfy yourself that this is not the problem. ___________________________________________ ☺ When everything else fails, read the instructions.

I'm using XP Pro SP2 and the 200 GB SATA drive is shows up at ~ 186GB which is correct. You know the one thing I did not do and thanks for reminding me is to see what the BIOS is reporting for the HDD. I'll check and make sure the 48 Bit LBA on the OS and the BIOS. I really didn't think that was an issue since I had another 200GB HDD. Let me tell you how this all began and it might give you a better understanding. My MBR got corrupted on my 60GB HDD about 3 weeks ago. While I was troubleshooting the 60GB and trying to recover the data, I went out and bought this 200GB IDE to termporarily load an OS on so we could do basic stuff like get e-mail. That 200GB drive worked fine and also showed up as 186GB. When I fixed the 60GB, I took the 200 GB IDE out and put the 60GB back in, wiped the HD, and reloaded the OS (XP Pro SP2) and all the software. Once that was ready to go, I wanted to add this 200 GB IDE to the system, which already had the 200 GB SATA. This whole problem is just trying to get XP to read the new 200GB IDE HDD. That's why I was wondering if XP would only accept so much HDD space. Thanks Abomb1111

Make 2 equal NTFS partitions on that 200GB harddisc and try it again. If you can't access the HD anyway unplug all other HD's and connect your new one to the First IDE port as a master device with no other hardware attached on the that cable. Power up and get into BIOS try to detect HD at IDE devices or put in parameters (written on HD top side) manually. If your drive got recognized chance bootsequence to floppy as first bootdevice. Insert win 98 bootdisk and reboot. After DOS is installed run FDISK from floppy and create 2 equal DOS FAT32 partitions. When done power off PC and reconnect everything as it was before and add you new HD as additional storage to the motherboards IDE port or the PCI IDE card one. Turn on PC & boot into XP. XP will recognize the FAT32 DOS partitioned new HD as 2 separate drives which you can format into NTFS if you wish. succes velcron122

Your new 200 GB HDD is an IDE not SATA. Which IDE are you connecting to? and what else is connected to that IDE port? Also your old 200 GB HDD is SATA and the new one is IDE. It is possible that the SATA port is able to handle large hard drives but not the IDE ports. This depends on your BIOS and Motherboard. So check that. In answer to your question, to my knowleddge XP does not have a capacity limit apart from the number of physical devices that you can attach. The only other capacity limit is the one I have already mentioned of 137 GB which apparently you are not affected by. ___________________________________________ ☺ When everything else fails, read the instructions.