Maxtor 160GB in 1394 case A-Tec CD-503FW=128GB !?!

[Guest]

Several Maxtor 160GB HD's, model 4G160J8 are housed in A-Tec's CD503-FW 1394/FireWire case. The drives I tested OK on an UATA133 controller. Now in the 1394 case in Windows only 128GB or 131069MB are shown. No matter what i do, nothing, every Windows only shows 128GB, from Win95 to .Net 3615. I tested this on my Dell Inspiron 8100 1200Mhz and an Athlon K7 700Mhz. Since the drives are connected on 1394 interface no drivers should be required. BIOS has nothing to do with FireWire since it is the Operating System which handles Plug & Play.
Contacting A-Tec does nothing, I have sent them several mails=NO REPLY. Their site is basically crap, no support and their main driver package is a corrupt zip file, I tried downloading it for several weeks, no change & no reply to my notices. Dell says it is not their problem even though it is THEIR OEM XP I am running. Microsoft points me to Dell cause..previous sentence, even paid assistance. Maxtor is helping me out, but... Maxtor said the all-around problem with MotherBoards not able to handle drives over a certain size (like >137GB) is not the case here since the drives are connected through FireWire interface. I might as well post this in the crappy support section, but Maxtor has/is supporting well, but I'm afraid a solution is somewhere on Mars.

 

[Lars_Coleman]

The firmware on the tailgate for the enclosure probably doesn't support the 48bit LBA. Maxtor makes their own external 160GB drive. Why don't you get that?

<font color=red>People and hard drives are like bandwagon fans and sports!</font color=red>

 

[TheAntipop]

Probably cause their own drives are so expensive. But as for the problem, even though Maxtor says it's not a BIOS problem, it wouldn't hurt to get the latest update to be sure. Also, I didn't think any OS before XP could handle drives over the 128, or 137 (don't remember which) limit.

The holder of <i>this</i> pass is <b>exempt</b> from all forms of <font color=red>flaming</font color=red>.

 

[Zlash]

Hard drive size really isn't a limitation of the OS.

<font color=red>:</font color=red> <font color=white>:</font color=white> <font color=blue>:</font color=blue>

 

[Guest]

The drives & 1394 housing I bought from a someone selling computer parts on EBay for quite some time, so my untrusty feelings fainted away. Also I got his assurance everything would work. So much for that, DuH. I trust nature to kick his behind one fine day or more.
The concerned tailgate is "A-Tec 1394 Firewire Bridge Rev.1.11. www.a-tec.com.tw or a-tecsubsystem.com site does not respond to any emails I sent, nor does their office pick up any phones. So I guess I have 2 options, either build a box for the drives or get the original cases from Maxtor, since a firmware upgrade is probably unlikely to be prepped. Using the drives 128Gigs makes XP crash to a blue screen on 'disk.sys' each time when using them, even when I am not using them to their maximum. XP simply can not handle it. I have to cap my transfers to keep the system stable. (!) FTP'ing internally seems to be the most reliable. I have gotten speeds of up to 8000kbps but that ends up in blue screen also. I've sent error reports to Microsoft when rebooted so they should be aware of it.

 

[Lars_Coleman]

The only difference between Maxtor's external 80GB model and the 160GB model, is that the firmware on the tailgate and one has 160GB . The tailgate is what is doing the 48bit LBA translation. It seems that yours is only doing the 28bit translation.

I would almost put money on that being your problem, but I don't have any money .

<font color=red>People and hard drives are like bandwagon fans and sports!</font color=red>

 

[Owl]

I use w2k pro and Promise Ultra133 TX2 2 Channel ATA133 Controller Card for 66Mhz PCI with 1 ATA133 20gig maxtor
on master/primary and 2 x 160gig maxtor as 2nd M/S and have had good luck in a 4u rack/sys..
OS on 20gig and only drivers i use are for the Controller Card.....

<font color=blue>Join THG UD TEAM WE NEED YOUR HELP NOW</font color=blue>

 

[xman045]

Anonymous! I have the same problem with maxtor HD. Having capacity 160Gb and showing 128Gb. I installed EaseUS partition manager in another hard disk and try to delete and recreate maxtor's partition, in first attempt in EaseUS software it shows 160Gb and partitions made easily but my mistake when I try to copy the XP image from another hard disk to maxtor via diskmxl software tool, it deleted all other drives other then the drive in which I copied XP OS files. Next time when I try to repartition thru EaseUS software it shows 128Gb capacity in Maxtor hard drive. Till then I try approx. 30 times to format / delete & creat partition it shows the same. I think Curiosity can find the problem on Mars.

(whenever u find the solution plz send me on xman045@hotmail.com)

 

[fzabkar]

@xman045, is your Maxtor drive in an external enclosure?