Specifications

Windows 137GB Capacity Barrier Version 1.0
19 7-Mar-2003
Some sources may suggest the IAA. While it is true that WinNT is listed, for the purposes of this
discussion, Seagate only suggests the IAA as an alternative when building a new system and not
for adding a drive to an existing Windows NT system.
Windows NT supports FAT16 and NTFS file systems. Several partitioning rules exist for
Windows NT which are beyond the scope of this paper. For further information, see
Q114841:"Windows NT Boot Process and Hard Disk Constraints", Q119497:"Boot Partition
Created During Setup Limited to 4 Gigabytes", Q138364:"Windows NT Partitioning Rules During
Setup" at support.microsoft.com.
New system consideration
– Seagate's DiscWizard Starter Edition disc installation software is
designed to make building a new system as easy as possible. If your system BIOS sees the full
capacity of the drive DiscWizard will not install a DDO. If your BIOS has a capacity limitation,
DWSE will install a DDO that is compatible with the IAA. DWSE also provides the convenience of
a fast partition and format saving nearly an hour over the operating system tools.
Boot partitions are limited to 4GB. The remaining capacity of the drive can be prepared as an
NTFS partition from within the Windows environment after loading the operating system.
Warning: Formatting a drive past the 137GB barrier on a system that does not meet all
requirements of BIOS support and the Intel Application Accelerator 48-bit Addressing
operating system drivers will result in data loss. Seagate is not responsible for lost data.
If you have an Intel compatible chipset, and after the OS and IAA are installed, any additional
gigabytes will show up later as unallocated space on the drive. You can easily create a second
partition with DiscWizard 2003 or the Windows Disk Management partitioning tools.
Adding a drive to an existing system
– Controller cards are the easiest solution when adding an
ATA>137GB drive to an existing system. Seagate's DiscWizard 2003 disc installation software
for Windows is designed to make adding a new drive to a system as easy as possible.
10. Windows NT v4 on a PCI controller card
Controller cards support ATA interface disc drives through their own onboard BIOS and Windows
device drivers. These storage controller cards are plug-and-play compatible and usually detected
in the Windows Device Manager as "SCSI controllers" due to the similarity in disc access
command structure. Since the drives are supported by drivers that emulate the SCSI driver
approach, the native Windows 137GB ATA limitation does not apply since those drivers are not in
use.
Companies which are known to manufacture ATA controller cards that support drives greater
than 137GB are SIIG, Inc (http://www.siig.com
), Promise Technology, Inc.
(http://www.promise.com
), HighPoint Technologies, Inc. (http://www.highpoint-tech.com) and
ACARD Technology (http://www.acard.com
).
If your disc drives are recognized by the controller BIOS when the system is first powered on but
later the drives are not seen by Windows then the device drivers for the controller card need to be
installed. See your controller card documentation for direction.
Windows NT supports FAT16 and NTFS file systems. Several partitioning rules exist for
Windows NT which are beyond the scope of this paper. For further information, see