P4S333 hard drive capacity

Hi All!

Does anyone know if this motherboard would recognize a 160GB hard drive in a
P4S333 motherboard? The board is the original I purchased, not flashed,
it's REV 1.xx and Bios Award Revision 1006C 04/19/2002. This info is from a
Belarc Advisor report.

I just bought a Seagate Barracuda 160GB from Best Buy that had a $50 rebate
I couldn't resist, and I need to Ghost my present hard drive to this new
one. I haven't installed it yet because first I wanted to find out if I
need to 'prepare' the new drive somehow first in order to use Symantec's
Ghost to put an image on the new drive. if anyone knows that answer too, it
would be most helpful.

But in reading the instructions that came with the drive, I thought I should
find out for sure if 160GB is too large for this version of this motherboard
bios. My current 80GB Maxtor drive is showing errors due to 'bad sector'
in Event Viewer. I use WinXP Professional in it.

Thank you anyone for help with either of the above dilemmas.......
katy

In article , "Katy"
wrote:

Hi All!

Does anyone know if this motherboard would recognize a 160GB hard drive in a
P4S333 motherboard? The board is the original I purchased, not flashed,
it's REV 1.xx and Bios Award Revision 1006C 04/19/2002. This info is from a
Belarc Advisor report.

I just bought a Seagate Barracuda 160GB from Best Buy that had a $50 rebate
I couldn't resist, and I need to Ghost my present hard drive to this new
one. I haven't installed it yet because first I wanted to find out if I
need to 'prepare' the new drive somehow first in order to use Symantec's
Ghost to put an image on the new drive. if anyone knows that answer too, it
would be most helpful.

But in reading the instructions that came with the drive, I thought I should
find out for sure if 160GB is too large for this version of this motherboard
bios. My current 80GB Maxtor drive is showing errors due to 'bad sector'
in Event Viewer. I use WinXP Professional in it.

Thank you anyone for help with either of the above dilemmas.......
katy

http://www.asus.it/support/english/t...hdd/index.aspx
Supported since BIOS 1004.

The OS part of things is a different issue however. If you Ghost
the current install over to the new drive, the OS may not be
prepared to boot from the 160GB drive, and the image on the new
160GB drive could be corrupted after it boots.

http://www.48bitlba.com/winXPhb.htm (fresh install recommendations)
http://www.48bitlba.com/reference.htm (reference info)

HTH,
Paul

Your motherboard will only recognize up to 137GB of harddrive capacity.

--
DaveW



"Katy" wrote in message
...
Hi All!

Does anyone know if this motherboard would recognize a 160GB hard drive in
a
P4S333 motherboard? The board is the original I purchased, not flashed,
it's REV 1.xx and Bios Award Revision 1006C 04/19/2002. This info is from
a
Belarc Advisor report.

I just bought a Seagate Barracuda 160GB from Best Buy that had a $50
rebate
I couldn't resist, and I need to Ghost my present hard drive to this new
one. I haven't installed it yet because first I wanted to find out if I
need to 'prepare' the new drive somehow first in order to use Symantec's
Ghost to put an image on the new drive. if anyone knows that answer too,
it
would be most helpful.

But in reading the instructions that came with the drive, I thought I
should
find out for sure if 160GB is too large for this version of this
motherboard
bios. My current 80GB Maxtor drive is showing errors due to 'bad
sector'
in Event Viewer. I use WinXP Professional in it.

Thank you anyone for help with either of the above dilemmas.......
katy

Ok, I won't be alarmed then when that is all that is visible. Thanks for
clarifying the total amount recognized.
It is still more than I am getting right now and I can upgrade with a newer
mobo down the road for the rest. I'm fine with the 137gb. Thanks Dave!
katy

"DaveW" wrote in message
news:gbq1d.38512$MQ5.11682@attbi_s52...
Your motherboard will only recognize up to 137GB of harddrive capacity.

--
DaveW



"Katy" wrote in message
...
Hi All!

Does anyone know if this motherboard would recognize a 160GB hard drive
in
a
P4S333 motherboard? The board is the original I purchased, not flashed,
it's REV 1.xx and Bios Award Revision 1006C 04/19/2002. This info is
from
a
Belarc Advisor report.

I just bought a Seagate Barracuda 160GB from Best Buy that had a $50
rebate
I couldn't resist, and I need to Ghost my present hard drive to this new
one. I haven't installed it yet because first I wanted to find out if I
need to 'prepare' the new drive somehow first in order to use Symantec's
Ghost to put an image on the new drive. if anyone knows that answer
too,
it
would be most helpful.

But in reading the instructions that came with the drive, I thought I
should
find out for sure if 160GB is too large for this version of this
motherboard
bios. My current 80GB Maxtor drive is showing errors due to 'bad
sector'
in Event Viewer. I use WinXP Professional in it.

Thank you anyone for help with either of the above dilemmas.......
katy

Thanks Paul! I understand now that only 137gb will be recognized on my
P4S333 mobo. Thank you for the link and info.

With your 2nd alert about the OS, the Ghost idea might not be in my best
interest. I suppose it makes sense that if this OS is pulling in data
that shows there is a 'bad sector', then that same info will carry over to
the new drive with the Ghost image? I was thinking this was a 'hardware'
problem and that trading the hardware for something new would help. But if
the image sees a problem, then Ghosting would not cure what the OS is
seeing? Would this be correct?

A ghost image would be preferable for me, but not if I wind up with the same
problem on a new, bad-sector-free hard drive. That can only occur if a
fresh install of the OS is done, is that correct?

Thanks again and please verify my understanding? katy


"Paul" wrote in message
...
In article , "Katy"
wrote:

Hi All!

Does anyone know if this motherboard would recognize a 160GB hard drive
in a
P4S333 motherboard? The board is the original I purchased, not flashed,
it's REV 1.xx and Bios Award Revision 1006C 04/19/2002. This info is
from a
Belarc Advisor report.

I just bought a Seagate Barracuda 160GB from Best Buy that had a $50
rebate
I couldn't resist, and I need to Ghost my present hard drive to this new
one. I haven't installed it yet because first I wanted to find out if I
need to 'prepare' the new drive somehow first in order to use Symantec's
Ghost to put an image on the new drive. if anyone knows that answer
too, it
would be most helpful.

But in reading the instructions that came with the drive, I thought I
should
find out for sure if 160GB is too large for this version of this
motherboard
bios. My current 80GB Maxtor drive is showing errors due to 'bad
sector'
in Event Viewer. I use WinXP Professional in it.

Thank you anyone for help with either of the above dilemmas.......
katy

http://www.asus.it/support/english/t...hdd/index.aspx
Supported since BIOS 1004.

The OS part of things is a different issue however. If you Ghost
the current install over to the new drive, the OS may not be
prepared to boot from the 160GB drive, and the image on the new
160GB drive could be corrupted after it boots.

http://www.48bitlba.com/winXPhb.htm (fresh install recommendations)
http://www.48bitlba.com/reference.htm (reference info)

HTH,
Paul

In article , "Katy"
wrote:

Thanks Paul! I understand now that only 137gb will be recognized on my
P4S333 mobo. Thank you for the link and info.

With your 2nd alert about the OS, the Ghost idea might not be in my best
interest. I suppose it makes sense that if this OS is pulling in data
that shows there is a 'bad sector', then that same info will carry over to
the new drive with the Ghost image? I was thinking this was a 'hardware'
problem and that trading the hardware for something new would help. But if
the image sees a problem, then Ghosting would not cure what the OS is
seeing? Would this be correct?

A ghost image would be preferable for me, but not if I wind up with the same
problem on a new, bad-sector-free hard drive. That can only occur if a
fresh install of the OS is done, is that correct?

Thanks again and please verify my understanding? katy

I would attack the problem in a few steps:

1) Verify that the motherboard can actually run the disk in its
full 160GB glory. To do that, follow the instructions on the
48bitlba site, using either WinXP SP1, or whatever service pack
is required for your OS. Check that your OS has support for
137GB before wasting time on that option. Once the OS is installed,
fill the remaining space on the disk with 1GB sized files, as
a test. If you are truly in "137GB mode", then as you duplicate
and fill the disk with files, the file system will survive.
If the install is incorrect, the file system on the new disk will
be corrupted just as a file is copied to the 137GB mark (128GB
binary math). The reason I recommend going through this exercise,
is to verify that your OS, your motherboard hardware, and your
BIOS are happy at 137GB.

You can use this to prove or disprove DaveW's assertion.

If you never plan on attempting to access the upper 80GB of
space on the disk (i.e. the new disk is just a replacement 80GB
for the old disk), then this exercise isn't needed. If you
do a bit-by-bit copy of the original 80GB disk, the disk will
look to the OS like it is 80GB in size (note that if you
attack it with Partition Magic, you could get yourself into
trouble if you attempt to expand the partitions, as Partition
Magic will make the rest of the space available, at your peril,
if you haven't proved the OS can handle the new configuration).

I would leave the original 80GB disk disconnected from the
computer, while doing this test install of the OS. You don't want
anything messing up that disk.

A cheating option, would be to Google on "set max address",
which is an option on IDE disks to change the declared size
of the disk. I don't know of any software that will do this
for you, but if you want to make the disk look like a 120GB
or an 80GB, there is a mechanism in the ATA standard to do it.

2) Step 2 is to copy the disk bit-by-bit
3) Step 3 is optional. If you did the experiment in step1, then
once you are booted from the new disk, do whatever 48bitlba.com
says to do, to make your OS ready to handle the 137GB disk.
(Since you already tested this in step 1, you know it works :-)
Get a copy of Partition Magic and resize the partitions as you
like.

As for step 2...

Well, I don't know anything about Ghost, so all I can suggest is
to try to transfer the 80GB over to the 160GB and see if it works.

(Ghost manuals)
http://www.symantec.com/techsupp/files/ghost/index.html

I examined the Ghost 2000 manual (ngpe.pdf) and if you run
Ghost from an actual MSDOS prompt, it has a -clone option:

"To copy local drive one to local drive two:
ghostpe.exe -clone,mode=copy,src=1,dst=2 "

I think what this does, is copy 80GB from the first disk, to
the first 80GB of the second disk. This will make the second
half of the disk appear inaccessible (until you use Partition
Magic or a similar utility, to make changes later).

There is a later section in the manual "Examples of -CRC32 usage"
that shows how to generate CRC32 values for the files on the
old disk, and use that to compare to the image created on the
new disk. So, you can fashion a verify operation with a couple
of -CRC32 operations.

As I don't know a thing about Ghost, perhaps someone who does this
all the time can verify that this is the right thing to do :-)
My recipe above is how I would attempt to tackle the problem.
As with _any_ operation, no matter how innocuous, have a backup
of your data as protection against an accident/catastrophy.
(Like specifying the wrong SRC and DST disk IDs.)

When a disk exhibits symptoms like yours, the _first_ thing
you do, is use some backup software and your favorite backup
method, to protect yourself. Even if it means a few boxes of
CD/DVD rewriteables :-) I learned my lesson already, about putting
off backups "until tomorrow", only to find my disk is dead.

About the only potential hitch I see in this whole process, is
what Ghost will do if it finds a really bad sector. I've had
disks that hung up on a bad sector, and wouldn't do anything.
If your disk is that bad, making backups or Ghosting might be
quite a challenge. It may require a file backup approach, rather
than a bit-by-bit clone of the disk.

Good luck,
Paul



"Paul" wrote in message
...
In article , "Katy"
wrote:

Hi All!

Does anyone know if this motherboard would recognize a 160GB hard drive
in a
P4S333 motherboard? The board is the original I purchased, not flashed,
it's REV 1.xx and Bios Award Revision 1006C 04/19/2002. This info is
from a
Belarc Advisor report.

I just bought a Seagate Barracuda 160GB from Best Buy that had a $50
rebate
I couldn't resist, and I need to Ghost my present hard drive to this new
one. I haven't installed it yet because first I wanted to find out if I
need to 'prepare' the new drive somehow first in order to use Symantec's
Ghost to put an image on the new drive. if anyone knows that answer
too, it
would be most helpful.

But in reading the instructions that came with the drive, I thought I
should
find out for sure if 160GB is too large for this version of this
motherboard
bios. My current 80GB Maxtor drive is showing errors due to 'bad
sector'
in Event Viewer. I use WinXP Professional in it.

Thank you anyone for help with either of the above dilemmas.......
katy

http://www.asus.it/support/english/t...hdd/index.aspx
Supported since BIOS 1004.

The OS part of things is a different issue however. If you Ghost
the current install over to the new drive, the OS may not be
prepared to boot from the 160GB drive, and the image on the new
160GB drive could be corrupted after it boots.

http://www.48bitlba.com/winXPhb.htm (fresh install recommendations)
http://www.48bitlba.com/reference.htm (reference info)

HTH,
Paul

Thanks Paul, I hope you see this. I have run a disk test with Maxtor.exe 5
advance surface scans in fact and nothing it reports points to any bad
sectors. As with Partition Magic, I've tried also but nothing is found to
fix. I'm not sure why Event Viewer is showing this but I have copied my
important files to a DVD as backup. It would only do me good to start from
scratch vs. a Ghost image but the Ghost would've been easier, due to
installing so many programs &/or updates over again.

I'm planning to remove the Maxtor drive entirely and just install the
Seagate and install XP from scratch. I will order the SP2 from Microsoft
for all the updates, I have SP2 installed on here already (Maxtor still) and
all seems to be working ok. I haven't seen any negative affects from this
'bad sector' but its not going away either in EV.

Of course I would hope to use the full new hard drive size eventually so
I'll follow the suggestions you wrote down, I appreciate all your time and
information in this. I like Ghost but not if I'm just carrying a problem
from one drive to another.

Thanks again for ALL your work and I hope you're around when I finally get
this accomplished. I may need more advice

katy


"Paul" wrote in message
...
In article , "Katy"
wrote:

Thanks Paul! I understand now that only 137gb will be recognized on my
P4S333 mobo. Thank you for the link and info.

With your 2nd alert about the OS, the Ghost idea might not be in my best
interest. I suppose it makes sense that if this OS is pulling in data
that shows there is a 'bad sector', then that same info will carry over
to
the new drive with the Ghost image? I was thinking this was a
'hardware'
problem and that trading the hardware for something new would help. But
if
the image sees a problem, then Ghosting would not cure what the OS is
seeing? Would this be correct?

A ghost image would be preferable for me, but not if I wind up with the
same
problem on a new, bad-sector-free hard drive. That can only occur if a
fresh install of the OS is done, is that correct?

Thanks again and please verify my understanding? katy

I would attack the problem in a few steps:

1) Verify that the motherboard can actually run the disk in its
full 160GB glory. To do that, follow the instructions on the
48bitlba site, using either WinXP SP1, or whatever service pack
is required for your OS. Check that your OS has support for
137GB before wasting time on that option. Once the OS is installed,
fill the remaining space on the disk with 1GB sized files, as
a test. If you are truly in "137GB mode", then as you duplicate
and fill the disk with files, the file system will survive.
If the install is incorrect, the file system on the new disk will
be corrupted just as a file is copied to the 137GB mark (128GB
binary math). The reason I recommend going through this exercise,
is to verify that your OS, your motherboard hardware, and your
BIOS are happy at 137GB.

You can use this to prove or disprove DaveW's assertion.

If you never plan on attempting to access the upper 80GB of
space on the disk (i.e. the new disk is just a replacement 80GB
for the old disk), then this exercise isn't needed. If you
do a bit-by-bit copy of the original 80GB disk, the disk will
look to the OS like it is 80GB in size (note that if you
attack it with Partition Magic, you could get yourself into
trouble if you attempt to expand the partitions, as Partition
Magic will make the rest of the space available, at your peril,
if you haven't proved the OS can handle the new configuration).

I would leave the original 80GB disk disconnected from the
computer, while doing this test install of the OS. You don't want
anything messing up that disk.

A cheating option, would be to Google on "set max address",
which is an option on IDE disks to change the declared size
of the disk. I don't know of any software that will do this
for you, but if you want to make the disk look like a 120GB
or an 80GB, there is a mechanism in the ATA standard to do it.

2) Step 2 is to copy the disk bit-by-bit
3) Step 3 is optional. If you did the experiment in step1, then
once you are booted from the new disk, do whatever 48bitlba.com
says to do, to make your OS ready to handle the 137GB disk.
(Since you already tested this in step 1, you know it works :-)
Get a copy of Partition Magic and resize the partitions as you
like.

As for step 2...

Well, I don't know anything about Ghost, so all I can suggest is
to try to transfer the 80GB over to the 160GB and see if it works.

(Ghost manuals)
http://www.symantec.com/techsupp/files/ghost/index.html

I examined the Ghost 2000 manual (ngpe.pdf) and if you run
Ghost from an actual MSDOS prompt, it has a -clone option:

"To copy local drive one to local drive two:
ghostpe.exe -clone,mode=copy,src=1,dst=2 "

I think what this does, is copy 80GB from the first disk, to
the first 80GB of the second disk. This will make the second
half of the disk appear inaccessible (until you use Partition
Magic or a similar utility, to make changes later).

There is a later section in the manual "Examples of -CRC32 usage"
that shows how to generate CRC32 values for the files on the
old disk, and use that to compare to the image created on the
new disk. So, you can fashion a verify operation with a couple
of -CRC32 operations.

As I don't know a thing about Ghost, perhaps someone who does this
all the time can verify that this is the right thing to do :-)
My recipe above is how I would attempt to tackle the problem.
As with _any_ operation, no matter how innocuous, have a backup
of your data as protection against an accident/catastrophy.
(Like specifying the wrong SRC and DST disk IDs.)

When a disk exhibits symptoms like yours, the _first_ thing
you do, is use some backup software and your favorite backup
method, to protect yourself. Even if it means a few boxes of
CD/DVD rewriteables :-) I learned my lesson already, about putting
off backups "until tomorrow", only to find my disk is dead.

About the only potential hitch I see in this whole process, is
what Ghost will do if it finds a really bad sector. I've had
disks that hung up on a bad sector, and wouldn't do anything.
If your disk is that bad, making backups or Ghosting might be
quite a challenge. It may require a file backup approach, rather
than a bit-by-bit clone of the disk.

Good luck,
Paul



"Paul" wrote in message
...
In article , "Katy"
wrote:

Hi All!

Does anyone know if this motherboard would recognize a 160GB hard
drive
in a
P4S333 motherboard? The board is the original I purchased, not
flashed,
it's REV 1.xx and Bios Award Revision 1006C 04/19/2002. This info is
from a
Belarc Advisor report.

I just bought a Seagate Barracuda 160GB from Best Buy that had a $50
rebate
I couldn't resist, and I need to Ghost my present hard drive to this
new
one. I haven't installed it yet because first I wanted to find out
if I
need to 'prepare' the new drive somehow first in order to use
Symantec's
Ghost to put an image on the new drive. if anyone knows that answer
too, it
would be most helpful.

But in reading the instructions that came with the drive, I thought I
should
find out for sure if 160GB is too large for this version of this
motherboard
bios. My current 80GB Maxtor drive is showing errors due to 'bad
sector'
in Event Viewer. I use WinXP Professional in it.

Thank you anyone for help with either of the above dilemmas.......
katy

http://www.asus.it/support/english/t...hdd/index.aspx
Supported since BIOS 1004.

The OS part of things is a different issue however. If you Ghost
the current install over to the new drive, the OS may not be
prepared to boot from the 160GB drive, and the image on the new
160GB drive could be corrupted after it boots.

http://www.48bitlba.com/winXPhb.htm (fresh install recommendations)
http://www.48bitlba.com/reference.htm (reference info)

HTH,
Paul