250GB WD Drive in Dell Inspiron 8500

BIOS update, EIDE card, or overlay software? (FAQ Hard disk recognition)
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guitarec
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Okay, I read and done the research on the board, and I think I understand how this works, but I'm wanting to talk through how to make it happen correctly...

Background:

I have a Dell Inspiron 8500 with the most recent BIOS update (Revision A08)
I've maxed out the RAM (2GB) and am replacing the original 60GB HD with a 250GB WD drive I got for my birthday.

I will be installing WinXP SP1 (and after installation, upgrading back to SP3).

For this to work with the LBA limitation in the BIOS, I need to partition the drive into pieces (already tried to split it in 2 116.45GB drives, but we'll give this another go) and install the OS on the partition that is smaller than the 120GB/137GB limit.

When I tried this before, I used WinXP SP3 Drive Manager to create 2 equal partitions of 116.45GB in size and formatted them using an external USB case. I made them PRIMARY partitions (don't know if I should have done LOGICAL partitions, so some pointers there would be helpful). Took out the old HD and installed the new one, and put in the OS CD to re-install, and the disk hung when it started to "Examining System".

All this being said, should I try making the first partition smaller still? Should I see if I can use the CD to install the OS on that partition while it is in the USB case?

I would appreciate any help that can be offered, as I am unemployed, and can't really afford to get a new computer...

Many thanks and God Bless,

Eric "GuitarEC"
Denniss
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It sounds like your CD already has the SP1 integrated so it should be fine in supporting drives over the Bios limit. I'd suggest to completely wipe out any partition on this drive and to partition only the space inside the Bios limit during setup. 32GiB is usually enough for the system partition but feel free to use anything up to 128GiB (please use quick format to format this partition or you'll have to wait looooong for this to finish). All space above should be partitioned from within XP once it runs.
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