Specifications

Windows 137GB Capacity Barrier Version 1.0
14 7-Mar-2003
has this support by inspecting the installation CD artwork. It should say "Windows 2000 Including
Service Pack 3."
Windows 2000 manufactured prior to August 2002 has a native limitation of 137GB supporting
ATA interface disc drives that are attached to traditional Primary and Secondary IDE Channels on
the motherboard. In this configuration Win2000 will not create partitions greater than 137GB until
after the Service Pack is installed and registry bit EnableBigLBA is set to 1.
See Microsoft Knowledgebase article Q260910:"How to Obtain the Latest Windows 2000 Service
Pack" at support.microsoft.com.
See also the Microsoft Knowledgebase article that explains how to enable large drive support
after the Service Packs are installed. For Windows 2000 SP3 see article Q305098:"48-bit LBA
Support for ATAPI Disk Drives in Windows 2000" at support.microsoft.com.
New system consideration
– If your system BIOS sees the full capacity of the drive and your
Windows 2000 CD says "… Including Service Pack 3" you are completely ready to utilize ATA
interface disc drives greater than 137GB. If your BIOS is not up to the task you can apply a BIOS
update or use Seagate's DiscWizard Starter Edition and the DDO described above. DWSE also
provides the convenience of a fast partition and format saving nearly an hour over the operating
system tools.
If your Windows 2000 CD does not indicate SP3, then your boot drive partition will have a
maximum size of 137GB. After the OS and SP3 are installed, any additional gigabytes will show
up as unallocated space on the drive and you can easily create a second partition with
DiscWizard 2003 or the Windows disk management tools. Also, if you prefer to have a single
partition, third party applications such as Partition Commander from VCom or Partition Magic
from Powerquest may be able to stretch the partition to annex the newly found capacity.
Microsoft does provide a method of merging the Service Pack into an older copy of Windows
2000. This process is called "Slipstreaming" and is very complicated. This process requires that
you be able to burn a new Windows 2000 OS installation CD. You can search the Internet for
"slipstreaming Windows 2000" to find instructions on this process. Seagate does not assist in
preparing slipstream installation CDs.
Adding a drive to an existing system
– If Windows 2000 is already up and running then check
MyComputer Properties to determine if your version has SP3. If not, you should install the
Service Pack before working with the new hard drive. If SP3 is installed and the Disk
Administrator tools show 137GB on your new drive, then EnableBigLBA is not yet on.
Seagate's DiscWizard 2003 disc installation software for Windows is designed to make adding a
new drive to a system as easy as possible. For your convenience, Seagate's DiscWizard
installation software can set the EnableBigLBA bit in the registry and prepare the drive to full
capacity if service pack support is active in the operating system.
6. Windows 2000 on a PCI controller card
Controller cards support ATA interface disc drives through onboard BIOS and custom Windows
device drivers. These storage controller cards are plug-and-play compatible and usually detected
in the Windows Device Manager as "mass storage controller" or as "SCSI controllers" due to the
similarity in disc access command structure. Since the drives are supported by drivers that