Windows NT Hard Drive Limitation

elevmike

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Feb 2004
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Ok, I know this is way off topic for this forum, but there are a lot of smart people here that may know the answer. I'm getting desperate so I thought I would give it a shot here.

I'm attempting to upgrade the hard drives in my Windows NT 4.0 server (SP6a). The problem is the old story about the 8GB limitation. Service Pack 4 or greater was suppose to take care of this but this dosnt seem to be the case, (in my case anyway). After installing a new 120gb drive, Disk Administrator only sees 8gb. My bios shows the right size drive but NT dosnt. I've gone to microsoft, and googled for two days now but I cant find anthing short of reinstalling Windows NT. Does any one know of a short cut or a workaround to get an existing NT server to recognize a larger than 8gb drive?
 
Bitmore,

I would concure with your very keen observation...

Does anybody have an NT server with a bigger than 8gb drive? If so how did you do it?

Mike
 
Have a look at THIS article from MicroSOFT. Could it be as simple as using the Atapi.sys file from SP4?... :confused:

I'll stick with Win98, thank you... ;)

beerchug

-Eric
 
Eric Nelson said:
Have a look at THIS article from MicroSOFT. Could it be as simple as using the Atapi.sys file from SP4?... :confused:

I'll stick with Win98, thank you... ;)

beerchug

-Eric

Nicely done, I wouldn't have had a clue.


Speaking of 98 I couldn't agree with you more. Did you see that this?

http://informationweek.securitypipeline.com/news/19202127

Keep in mind that it's only good for SE (but who would want plain old 98?)


John
 
Very interesting, root! Yes, I run 98SE. I might give it a try on my home computer.

Your avatar reminds me that ol' Hootnholler hasn't been around recently (he used the same avatar). His last post was Dec. 16, '03... :(

He would probably have an answer for Mike... :nodi:

I think there's enough IT guys hanging around here that Mike should have an answer soon.
Within 24 hours, all the regulars will have 'checked in' at least once... ;)

beerchug

-Eric
 
Eric Nelson said:
Very interesting, root! Yes, I run 98SE. I might give it a try on my home computer.

Gotta love 98(SE) for playing games at home. And since I no longer connect that machine to the net I don't even worry about virii.

I'm going to backup the important stuff (digital pictures, etc) and then give it a try. Even if it crashes horribly, I can still get in to salvage stuff (so I'm not too worried about any disasters happening).

I'll let you know if the smoke leaks out. :sick:


Your avatar reminds me that ol' Hootnholler hasn't been around recently (he used the same avatar). His last post was Dec. 16, '03... :(

As for the avatar, I picked it since it's the mascot of a certain OS ;)

As for Hootnholler, he might be back, I was gone for a looonnngg time before raising my ugly head once more. In fact, I might even predate Terry Woods :)



I think there's enough IT guys hanging around here that Mike should have an answer soon.
Within 24 hours, all the regulars will have 'checked in' at least once... ;)

beerchug

-Eric

That's a good thing, because Lord knows that I don't have any skills when it comes to Windows. :p


John
 
I've already installed the new Atapi.sys through service pack 4 and service pack 6a. The proglem still exists. This may be due to a later install of a LS120 Drive that may have replaced the updated atapi.sys with an older one. I was hoping to find a hot fix for this. All the other Google results seem to want me to re-install atapi.sys by re-installing Windows NT. I dont think that's a practical solution. There has to be a better way.

Eric, I to am running Win 98 on my workstations. I see no point to upgrade right now, but I know time is running short for the whole system...

Mike.
 
I dont understand the process you went thru when installing the 120gb drive. Did you Drive Copy or something to setup the new drive OR fdisk, format and install NT?

I built and sold computers for 5 years and havent seen a hard drive limitation in 5 years. NTFS can handle 16 terabytes but drivers can create problems.

Personally I would try reinstalling the Service Packs starting with SP4.

If you did a Drive Copy or Ghost to setup the new drive then you will probably need to reinstall windows and the Service Packs. I dont see an issue with doing a reinstall sometimes its necessary.
 
Ron,

I did not do drive copy or ghost or anything like that. I just installed the drive, started the computer and went to Disk Administrator, to see that it recognized the drive as drive 1, and 8gb. I went to try to partition the drive and the max partition it would accept was 8gb. I have installed SP6a which is supposed to include the new atapi.sys. I have also formated the drive (Using Disk Administrator) NTFS in hopes of it formating the whole drive but it didnt work out that way.

Windows NT is already running on Drive 0. Drive 0 is partitioned into C and F. (4gb each). My hope was to install a new 120gb drive, then partitioning the drive into two partitions 6gb, and 110gb. I was then planning to mirror C: onto the 6 gb partition, and F: onto the 110gb partition.

Should I be seeing the whole drive in Disk Administrator? I dont get it...

Can I reinstall SP6a? Will this cause problems? And what should be the results that I should notice?

Thanks Mike.
 
Last edited:
Could be a BIOS problem.

It could be that your BIOS cannot handle the drive. I have had lots of NT machines with much larger than 8 Gbyte partions but it sounds like you have an older computer whose motherboard may not support such a large drive.
There may be a disk utility from the manufacturer that can will fool the BIOS into recognizing it. If you don't understand any of this talk to someone in a computer shop and they can help you out.
 
John, Thanks for your reply.

As I stated in my origional post this is not a Bios issue. The issue is somewhere within Disk Administrator. My problem is the disk Administrator only shows 8gb of drive.
 
Boot partion limit

The limit of 8Gbyte is to the boot partion only. You should be able to get the 6G and 110G as you want. I agree with the post by Allan suggesting Partion Magic as it does make it easier to do. Remember though
that if you make the boot/system partion larger than 8Gbytes you may find that your computer will not boot up.

For additional information about disk partitioning and limitations, please see the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

114841 Windows NT boot process and hard disk constraints

119497 Boot partition created during setup limited to 4 gigabytes

197667 Installing Windows NT Server on a large IDE hard disk
 
Be sure you have the drive's jumper set to CS for cable select. Check that there are no compatibility jumpers set for older operating systems. I had an 80 gig drive that would show up as 8 gig until I took care of these things.
 

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