large hard drive windows xp help

hhhhbk

hhhhbk

hhhhbk

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1 Apr 2004
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my current system
xp2500m abit nf7 2x512 pc3200 geil value
120 GB hitatchi drive

im looking at getting a 250 gig seagate ide drive to replace my current 120
(and then use the 120 in my second tower)

i run windows xp pro no updates no service packs and dont plan to change this
as in the past when i have let it update it seems to cause problems rather than fix them

my question is will the 250GB ata100 ide drive work fine and show up its full size without loading the service packs?

need to know for definite before i order one as i have read a lot of comments online about large ide drives working in pio slow mode and only showing 127GB

if this is the case i may just get a pair of 120s and raid them

thx
 
no i think u need a sp to see large drives. if you do get a pair of 120's then u cant raid them and expect to see 240gb, as raid turns it into one large drive, not 2 little ones.

just run the sp2 file!!
 
The problem isn't really with drive size, it's todo with partition size (Pre SP1 / SP2 didn't use 48-bit LBA hence the ~131GB limit). With a 250GB drive, you could have two 120GB partitons fine but if you want one contiguous partition of 250GB then you'll need to upgrade. As said, two 120GB in RAID will do no good as the 131GB limit is to do with partitioning within Windows.

This is the price to pay if you don't upgrade. I understand you've had problems before but SP2 I'd deem stable now and any issues may be fixed by hot issues and with the number of people on here, I'm sure most problems we could give a hand with.
 
Yeah, I used to be one to advocate not updating to SP2 as it killed my windows twice having installed it within 1 week of release. The only thing you need to worry about is if you don't update your programs. I very much doubt this, so SP2 will run fine. Why not even SP1? It's been around for so long and comes preinstalled on PC's.
 
thanks for the responses

after thinking about it
easiest solution to me wanting more disk space is just to get a second 120GB drive

I may try installing windows with SP2 on this new drive to see what its like
its about 2 years since i last tried installing a service pack
it messed up another system which was working fine previously
and i had to then reformat it back as it was in the first place

as it was the second time a service pack had messed up a pc which was working perfectly i decided not to bother trying again as i couldnt see the point
iv been running xp pro without any service packs for almost 4 years on 2 pcs which are online 24/7 and have never really had a problem due to xp
 
Installing SP2 on a windows setup is a nightmare waiting to happen. If your going to rebuild however find info on how to make a CD with SP2 already installed. (google for "slipstream windows SP2") This i've always found to be completely painless.
 
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