f13.net

I did a quick check and didn't find anything on the board...

I just bought a Maxtor 250 gig serial HD, did a fresh install for XP pro, ran Maxtor's "oversized HD" patch; but Windows won't recognize more than 137 gigs of my HD.  Does anyone know of something else I need to do, or have any ideas?  Windows installed fine, and formated the drive fine.  My motherboard seems to recognize the drive as 250 gig...

Just curious, do you know if the size limit can be avoided if you split the drive into two partions?

It sounds like you are installing the original Windows XP, not SP1 or SP2. You need at least SP1 to overcome the 137 GB limit:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;q303013

As far as I know I've got Service pack 2 installed (because my update tells me so, and that huge fucking download).  I'll double check, but I'm 99% sure I've got it.

Did you install SP2 after you partitioned your hard drive or before? I.e. what version of Windows XP is on your install CD? That's the one that needs to be SP1 or SP2 unless you partition your new hard drive before doing the install using a boot drive that already has SP1 or SP2 installed on it.

Oh fuck me.  Nope, I've got a version 1.0 install disk.

So... to solve said problem I need to install XP to another drive (update to SP2), then... what?  Run my OS from the other (smaller drive) and hook-up/reinstall my larger drive and reformat?  Never had to partition a drive after install before (or deal with a problem like this for that matter).

Yes that's right. Install XP to another drive that will be your temporary boot drive and upgrade it to SP2. Hook back up your 250 SATA drive and make sure it's not the boot drive (e.g. make it the D: drive). Then wipe out the partition on the 250 SATA drive and repartition and reformat to take up the entire space. Then when you install XP on that drive just skip the partition step (it may not even ask you). Another option which I've never tried before is to get a 3rd party partitioning program that allows you to extend the partition "non-destructively". Then you don't have to deal with all that reinstalling.

If you have a good spare drive, I'd leave the OS on it and use the second drive as the location for all your programs/games/files/etc. That way  you can reinstall the OS by reformatting your smaller drive and reinstalling - without messing with your other stuff.

Thanks for all your help

Edit:  Ended up getting a partition program, bingo works great.

FYI - I had a similar problem a while back.  If you do a bit of googling for Windows XP install, ur, SP2, and I think the term is splicing, there are  a few good websites that show you how you can create a new Windows XP install disc that has SP2 included.  With that you can then install XP with all the goodies SP2 has (including support for large discs).  I highly recommend doing this - its made my reinstalls much easier.

Slipstreaming. The coolest thing XP does.

So it was a size issue?  My problems with recognizing a disk generally came from a lack of SATA drivers in my XP install image (it's, uh, old).  Worked well enough when I figured out that I was supposed to press F8 or whathefuck during the initial load to install "other SCSI" drivers... since the parent device is a SATA RAID controller.