Windows XP & Large Hard Drives

[monolith]

I run Win XP SP1 on a P4 2.8 GHz with two hard drives:

Primary Master 46GB IBM Deskstar (OS, Programs)
Primary Slave 185GB IBM Deskstar (Data)

It has been troublesome to run the larger disk on a single partition before, but I tried again as I updated the rest of my system and the disk now works perfectly. Microsoft does not seem to approve, however. As I boot up, Windows tries to run a scan disc which I know from bitter experience will erase most of the data on the drive.

Is there anything one can do to stop scan disc from running or must one accept the multiply partitions?

 

[infiltrator]

Strange problem? I have a 80 and 120GB IBM Deskstars, and I'm having no problem at all. What settings are you running it in your BIOS? You should try Auto, but check if LBA is selected. I also enabled 32bit disk access (sometimes not enabled by default). I have single partitions on each of them and they work fine. I would look at your BIOS, sounds like something funny going on. My does not run scandisk, but I do run it at specific times and I have no problem with it whatsoever.

I suppose my drive aint bigger than 137GB, so it could be something to do with your BIOS not supporting the 48bit addressing.

 

[monolith]

I happened to let scan disc run by accident and it did not erase data! Phew... The problem must have been before SP1, which Windows went crazy without.

 

[Vapor]

I've never heard of XP's scan disk erasing ANY data other than orphans.