The following are issues involving 48-bit LBA and various partition utilities.

PCI ATA controller card. If your 48-bit LBA hard drive is attached to the system using a PCI ATA controller card, you need to make sure the controller card fully supports 48-bit LBA. For more information about PCI ATA controllers and 48-bit LBA, click here. If your PCI ATA does fully support 48-bit LBA, you will be able to partition the hard drive to full capacity using all of the partition utility applications we have tested and listed under Tools & Drivers on any version of Windows which includes Windows 98, Me, 2000, and XP.

Windows 98 or Me. If you are running a Windows based partition utiity on Windows 98 or Me, you need an updated Windows driver for the onboard IDE controller in order to partition the hard drive to full capacity. Without an updated driver, the partition utility will report the maximum capacity of the hard drive as less than 137 GB. For motherboards based upon select chipsets in the Intel 8xx chipset family, there is the Intel Application Accelerator driver. Refer to Tools & Drivers for more information about drivers available and the actual Intel 8xx chipsets that the Intel Application Accelerator supports. The following are Windows based partition utilities:

Windows 2000. If you are running a Windows based partition utiity on Windows 2000, you need to install Service Pack 3 or greater in order to partition the hard drive to full capacity. You also need to make sure you have EnableBigLba value defined and set properly in the Windows registry. Without Service Pack 3 and EnableBigLba registry value set, the partition utility will report the maximum capacity of the hard drive as less than 137 GB. The following are Windows based partition utilities:

Windows XP. If you are running a Windows based partition utiity on Windows XP, you need to install Service Pack 1 or greater in order to partition the hard drive to full capacity. Without Service Pack 1, the partition utility will report the maximum capacity of the hard drive as less than 137 GB. The following are Windows based partition utilities:

Seagate DiscWizard Starter Edition. Seagate's DiscWizard Starter Edition partition utility is DOS based which boots from diskette. In order to partition the hard drive to full capacity the BIOS must support 48-bit LBA. If the BIOS does not support 48-bit LBA, the partition utility will report the maximum capacity of the hard drive as less than 137 GB and you will only be able to create partitions up to that size.

Maxtor MaxBlast 3. Maxtor's MaxBlast 3 partition utility is DOS based which boots from diskette. In order to partition the hard drive to full capacity the BIOS must support 48-bit LBA. If the BIOS does not support 48-bit LBA, the partition utility will report the maximum capacity of the hard drive as less than 137 GB and you will only be able to create partitions up to that size.

Western Digital Data LifeGuard. Western Digital's Data LifeGuard partition utility is DOS based which boots from diskette. In order to partition the hard drive to full capacity the BIOS must support 48-bit LBA. If the BIOS does not support 48-bit LBA, the partition utility will report the maximum capacity of the hard drive as less than 137 GB and you will only be able to create partitions up to that size.