Hard Drive Help!

[napalm]

A while ago I bought a 200GB 7200RPM Western Digital hard drive with an 8MB cache. Now it came with a "controller card" which you put in a PCI slot, and suggested i use it, but i decided not too.

Anyhow, I read a few sentances in PC World stating that a controller card with help increase the speed of my hard drive. Is there any truth to this?

Also, my hard drive is listed as "137 GB" (dont quote me, im not on the computer at the current moment, but its somewhere around there or 127) and I was wondeering if there was any way I could get the full 200 GB without buying partion magic (i think thats the name)

Also, I have a fairly new motherboard (A7N8X Deluxe) so that SHOULDNT be the problem

Thanks for the replies!

[Spanky McGee]

Did you buy it? Or did your parents?

[YellerDog]

D'oh!

[Lhadatt]

After that Hummer thread, I'm surprised you would ask anything here...

but I'll try to answer some of your questions.

For a new board, you shouldn't need that controller card. New boards are ATA100/133 compatable, and I believe the special editions can run at ATA100. Check the board's manual to see if it's got IDE ATA100/133 support.

As for the size reported by the BIOS, did you install it as a LBA drive? Or did the BIOS even give you a choice when it detected the drive? It should be installed as LBA, so make sure that is correct.

What size does your operating system report?

[Dyne]

i think windows xp has a problem recognizing drives of that size. poke around the sharkyextreme boards and youll get an answer, but i do remember a lot of people having trouble with really large drives.


found a related post.....
http://www.sharkyforums.com/showthre...hreadid=189886

"You need ATA/133 to overcome this. ATA/100's maximum hard drive specifications is 137GB, and with the real-world storage scheme (1024 Bytes instead of 1000 Bytes), you can really only use 133GB. Add in XP, which takes up a lot of space, and you're stuck with 128GB of storage space in a 200GB drive

I think the Retail boxes include ATA/133 controller cards for this reason. Not every motherboard out there has those controllers soldered onto them."

i guess thats why they included the controller card

[napalm]

Heh thanks, so does that mean that I should just plug it into the controller card which will make my computer think the ATA100 drive is really ATA133 and lemme have the 200 GB or somethin like that?

Also, I never changed any BIOS settings as far as my hard drive goes, I just put it in and installed windows XP and thats it. To get the 200GB with the controller card will I need to reinstall windows, or if I put the controller card in will it do the 200 automatically? (I'm thinkin i need to reinstall)

Also the manual mentioned something about pressing F10 (or something like that) in windows installation screen to install 3rd party SCSI drivers, any insite into that?

[Javon_McCloud]

You have to use the Promise card that came with your hard drive to take advantage of the full 200GB in XP.