Hard Drive Upgrade

[WaltR]

I have a Emachine Laptop running Windows XP Home Addition. This machine has been a work horse and I haven't been willing to give it up just yet. It has an 80 gb hard drive that is getting dangerously close to filling up. I purchase a WD 320 GB pata drive. Cloned my old drive, installed the new drive but my system will only recognize the drive as 137gb. I have spent hours researhing how I can get my system to recognize the full capacity of this drive. It seems I have two options.
1) upgrade the bios which is a phoenix bios. The problem here is I can't find an upgrade for this bios. The Phonenix Web site doesn't seem to offer bios upgrades or if so I can't find it.

2) upgrade the 32 bit something or other from Microsoft to 44 bit. I don't have a clue on how or if this can be done with my XP system.

Here are my questions.

I heard I could upgrade to Windows 7 and it would recognize the drive but my understanding is that I need about 4GB of memory for Windows 7 to operate correctly and my laptop is already maxed out at 1.250GB.

Is there a program that anyone has used or knows about that I can run to make my computer recognize this drive.

Or, am I forced to buy a new computer?

Any suggestions would be greatly apprecitated.

Thanks,

Walt

[WaltR]

Ok, I found out that since I have SP3 addition installed with XP, I have the 48 bit capability so it appears my only hope is to find an upgrade to my bios to a 48 bit bios. I have Phoenix Bios 4.0 Release 6.0 Version 0F07.P00

I'm stumped!

Walt

[billyo]

That's what WD hhd(s ) does..i've been cloning hhd(s) on my pc's ( 4 ) and laptops ( 4 ) for a while now as a matter of fact i just did this one i'm using right now last week from 80g to 500g and all my laptops from 250 -500, and WD is not the one to buy, in my opinion wd is garbage..you wont get the whole capacity. i've returned all the WD that i've used ..i'cloned one of my hhd's 250gb and used a WD 500gb , when i got done cloning the WD that is supposed to have the 500g, came to be the same amount of space as the 250 i was cloning.. if you cloned a hhd, lets say 500gb, you should get 465gb due to some of the data that's already installed in it before you clone..i dont think updating your Bios will change the amount of space on that hhd. unfortunatey i think WD is the only one that carries pata drives..i know this caused i just re-installed a new hhd on my friiends laptop and he had a pata and i've looked around , no other manufacturer . carries it except WD.and also you should delete the partitions unless you wanna install some files on that partition as a bak-up . warning though, if you do delete the partition, some of the data that is installed on that drive will be useless..

[WaltR]

Originally Posted by billyo

That's what WD hhd(s ) does..i've been cloning hhd(s) on my pc's ( 4 ) and laptops ( 4 ) for a while now as a matter of fact i just did this one i'm using right now last week from 80g to 500g and all my laptops from 250 -500, and WD is not the one to buy, in my opinion wd is garbage..you wont get the whole capacity. i've returned all the WD that i've used ..i'cloned one of my hhd's 250gb and used a WD 500gb , when i got done cloning the WD that is supposed to have the 500g, came to be the same amount of space as the 250 i was cloning.. if you cloned a hhd, lets say 500gb, you should get 465gb due to some of the data that's already installed in it before you clone..i dont think updating your Bios will change the amount of space on that hhd. unfortunatey i think WD is the only one that carries pata drives..i know this caused i just re-installed a new hhd on my friiends laptop and he had a pata and i've looked around , no other manufacturer . carries it except WD.and also you should delete the partitions unless you wanna install some files on that partition as a bak-up . warning though, if you do delete the partition, some of the data that is installed on that drive will be useless..

Thanks Billyo. I'm pretty sure my problem is the bios. If you delete the partition, I'm pretty sure you lose all the data on the drive. I believe I have to find a 48 bit bios update that will work with my computer.

Walt

[ddouglass]

Gentlemen, when you "clone" a drive it creates an exact duplicate of the original drive down to the exact size. It does not have anything to do with Bios or the hard drive manufacturer.
Walt, first if you want to upgrade your Bios you should always go through your computer mfg and not through the company making the Bios. However I don't think this will help.

[billyo]

[quote=ddouglass;103397]

It does not have anything to do with Bios or the hard drive manufacturer.

that's how it should be, but i've cloned all my original hhd's to a bigger drive , and i bought 8 500gb WD hhd,( this happened a while back ) and every one of them showed the same amount of available space as the original drive and only WD does that, i've called WD support and they coulnd't figure it out either..now i've been using Seagate, Hitachi and Samsung hhd and all of them worked fine, i just cloned my back-up laptop sunday from 250 to 500gb, using Seagate and it gave me plenty of space left. ..that's what i told waltr, upgrading Bios won't give the hhd more space..

[WaltR]

Originally Posted by ddouglass

Gentlemen, when you "clone" a drive it creates an exact duplicate of the original drive down to the exact size. It does not have anything to do with Bios or the hard drive manufacturer.
Walt, first if you want to upgrade your Bios you should always go through your computer mfg and not through the company making the Bios. However I don't think this will help.

Dale,

I cloned my old 80gb drive on to an external 160gb seagate usb drive. Then I installed the new wd320gb drive. I did a new xp install with the new 320gb drive. When the install was complete the drive was only 137gb. I then installed the cloned drive on to the new drive. I still had 137gb. According to Microsoft I must have SP1 or greater to recognize more than 137gb. They also claim that even with the SP1 or later, the bios must be a 48 bit bios or it will still only show a max of 137gb. Emachine doesn't offer a 48 bit bios for my machine and I have their latest upgrade. I have found a new upgrade for my bios through a third party through an update subscription but so far I haven't had the nerve to try the flash. They give all kinds of disclaimers and it kind of made me a little nervous. They have provided the bios, a winflash program and a dos flash program. Tomorrow morning when I feel fresh I may read everything they provided and give it a shot. At this point it seems to be my only choice other than carry around external drives and if it screws up my computer I guess it may be time to buy a new one. I'll post back the result.

Thanks,

Walt

[Beavis]

there is an option when you clone to use all the hard drive space. ive never cloned a drive without all the hard drive space being there. i have used all types of drives. i use nortons ghost 10 .

[WaltR]

Well I flashed my bios with the upgrade through the third party vendor. All went well but I was a little nervous. The bad news is that it is still a 32 bit bios so it still only recognizes my wd320gb as 137gb. The vendor claims there are no newer bios updates that will work with my computer so I guess I'm out of luck. I called Western Digital Tech support yesterday and the tech advised that without a 48 bit bios xp won't recognize larger than 137gb drive. Same thing Microsoft claimed. One would thing that Western Digital would post minimum requirements for a particulare drive on their web but I guess they don't care. Where I am confused is why will my computer recognize large drives through a usb connection. Maybe it has something to do with a bootable drive??? Also, it seems when I clone my drive to a Seagate 160gb drive, the Seagate won't boot from the usb port. I guess to get it to boot it has to be the c: drive. Well, it looks like I am getting close to a new computer. I've looked at few and it seems they don't use an s video out anymore. Even MTU's rugged laptop uses a vga out which means going through an external converter for the singer's display if I understand correctly. It only has 2 gb ram and I thought Windows 7 with Hoster especially needed 4gb. Very expensive to me.



Walt

[hwheeler43]

Hi Walt. Why don't you simply move all your music files to an external drive and delete them from the internal? This should free up plenty of space and keep you going. I keep all my kma files on an external and run hoster that way. Works well.

[WaltR]

Originally Posted by hwheeler43

Hi Walt. Why don't you simply move all your music files to an external drive and delete them from the internal? This should free up plenty of space and keep you going. I keep all my kma files on an external and run hoster that way. Works well.

I know that is an option but now I purchased this wd320gb drive and was trying my best to get it working. It isn't going to happen with this puter. I used to keep my music files on an external drive but I just didn't want to carry one around anymore. Lazy in my old age. Also I thought by cloning my drive on to an external I would be in good shape if my internal drive ever crashed during a show. Wrong....can't boot to the cloned external drive or if one can I haven't figured out how just yet. I guess I'm destined to carry two laptops for backup purposes. I may buy a usb kit for this new drive and put the old back in the puter and do just what you suggested.

Thanks,

Walt

[billyo]

Waltr, what software are you using to clone your drive..

[WaltR]

acronis true image home 2010

[billyo]

oh ok, that's what i've been using, i have an old Dell laptop, maybe 8 or 9 yrs old ( Inspiron 1000 ), my 4 yrs. old daughter is using it now.. and i did an xp home edition fresh re-install , change the hhd from 40-80g, and it gave me the same 80g space when i got done minus the data that was already pre-installed...if you can find a diff.PATA hhd, brand, besides WD try it...WD like i said is famous for not giving tthe right space when cloning..if you noticed when you got done cloning " in the partition space ( d: ) it says " unused space "..

[WaltR]

Originally Posted by billyo

oh ok, that's what i've been using, i have an old Dell laptop, maybe 8 or 9 yrs old ( Inspiron 1000 ), my 4 yrs. old daughter is using it now.. and i did an xp home edition fresh re-install , change the hhd from 40-80g, and it gave me the same 80g space when i got done minus the data that was already pre-installed...if you can find a diff.PATA hhd, brand, besides WD try it...WD like i said is famous for not giving tthe right space when cloning..if you noticed when you got done cloning " in the partition space ( d: ) it says " unused space "..

Billyo,

Thanks for all your suggestions. going from a 40 to 80gb is not a problem with Xp home addition. Going above 137gb is the problem. Xp sp1 or above will recognize above 137gb but you have to have a 48 bit bios not the 32 bit bios that came with my computer. This is confirmed by Microsoft and other so called experts. My bios is a Phoenix bios used on a AMI mother board. Supposedly there is not a 48 bit bios that will work with my system. I've done much research on this and this is what keeps coming back to me. I thought I could partition the drive to get around the 137 gb but apparently no matter how many partitions I put on the drive it still will only have a max of 137gb with my system. I think I am at the end of the road here.

Thank you so much for your help.

Walt