160gb hard drive not giving full capacity

[SuperSparks]

I meant to also say that the BIOS is only used for booting up the system these days. Once Windows has loaded the drivers it ignores the BIOS, which is why you can have a size limitation in the BIOS without it affecting anything once Windows is up and running.

[Robert M]

Here's a link with some good information.
http://www.48bitlba.com/issues.htm

[Robert M]

To see if your version of XP PRO includes Service Pak 1, see the following link.
http://support.microsoft.com/default...;en-us;q303013

Here's an excerpt
Windows XP SP1 includes 48-bit LBA support for ATAPI disk drives. With this support, you can use hard disks that are larger than the current 137 GB limit. By default, support is enabled in SP1. To determine if you are running SP1, right-click My Computer and then click Properties. On the General tab, Service Pack 1 will be listed under "System."

[shahan]

I have Windows XP Pro. service pack 1 & 2 (might download sp 3)

Now, about the FAT32 vs NTFS side of things...

If XP ever breaks down, which it does, how do i get access to the data on NTFS drives?

I know you can resintall on the seperate partition or hard drive or keep a clone of XP and once xp is installed you can access the NTFS data again

or put it into another system if it can see NTFS data

recovery console is very limited - so thats a NO

I also just realised, although i maybe able to access data if it was FAT32 but then i wouldnt be able to copy todays large data parttitions unless you have a DOS system for copying it some drive or another FAT32 and you cant even copy to CD from DOS ?

and NTFS reader for dos wont be much help if you cant copy it somewhere like on to a CD or another partition like FAT32

[SuperSparks]

What I do, and have done for years, is to keep my important data on a separate hard drive to the one that Windows is on (as well as backing it up regularly as well, of course). That way if I ever need to reinstall Windows, I don't have to worry about getting to my data because it is all safe and sound on a different drive, and will be accessible as soon as Windows is up and running again. You can use a different partition on the same drive, if adding another drive is problematic, it's not quite as good, but is still a better solution that keeping the data on the OS partition.

Because my system works so well, I've never been in a situation where my data has become inaccessible on an NTFS volume, but on other people's systems that I've worked on I have been able to use a Linux CD to rescue data - it can read NTFS volumes well these days.