Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Large capacity drives vs. Windows XP SP2

This is topic Large capacity drives vs. Windows XP SP2 in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Adam Martin (Member # 641) on 05-04-2006, 03:38 AM:

I was having trouble with two 250GB Western Digital drives, so I pulled them out and put in a 500GB Seagate on the same Promise Ultra ATA 100 card.

The Promise card sees the new drive as a 465GB drive. Windows refuses to acknowledge it as anything but the pre-SP1 maximum of 138GB. The large capacity drive flags are properly set in the registry.

Putting the 250GB drives back in shows them at 250GB.

WTF? [Confused]

Posted by Anslem Rayburn (Member # 1267) on 05-04-2006, 06:04 AM:

Not sure the cause, but Seagate's website has some tools that might help : Seagate.com

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 05-04-2006, 06:16 AM:

Seagate drives are nothing but trouble, IMHO. In the 12 years I've been building my own PCs, I've had two drives fail and they've both been Seagates. I guess that's the reason why Seagate drives are typically 10-20% cheaper than their Maxtor or WD equivalents.

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 05-04-2006, 02:08 PM:

Update the Promise BIOS?

Checking my Pile-O-Bad-Drives I have 3 WD Caviars, and 1 Maxtor DiamondMax.

Posted by Adam Martin (Member # 641) on 05-04-2006, 02:58 PM:

It looks like it has something to do with the Promise card. If I plug the drive into the (only) EIDE jack on the motherboard, windows correctly recognizes the drive.

I used to swear by Western Digital drives, but these two drives taking a crap at the same time with all of my music library on one and the other acting as a files backup for the Film-Tech/Cinematour server really just pissed me off.

Seagate was recommended by a friend who is in IT for my new laptop drive and they seem to be built heavier than the WDs. The one other Seagate I have has run fine for a few years now, and it just sits on my desk precariously balanced on end since it won't fit in the machine it's connected to. [Big Grin]

My stack of dead drives would entail about 5 WDs, but it's not really fair since I've used WDs almost exclusively for years.

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 05-04-2006, 04:01 PM:

I doubt there's much statistical difference on failure rates among low-end drives from the major manufacturers.

Interestingly, many newer drives come in 2 flavors: 3 year warranty, and 5 year warranty. The prices are very close, maybe within $5-$15 of each other. I wonder if there's any difference between them in terms of build quality or how well they're tested, or if the extra $$ is just like buying an extended warranty.

Posted by Adam Martin (Member # 641) on 05-04-2006, 08:42 PM:

The final answer is that the Promise Ultra100TX2 card does not support drives over 138GB even with the newest firmware. It has been discontinued in favor of the Ultra133TX2 which does.

Why the cards worked for so long (and report the correct size drive from BIOS) with a 250GB drive is beyond me. Or maybe that's why the drives crashed.

I think it's a ploy to get everyone to buy new SATA drives.

[Shrug]