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64 bit harddrive xp install convert drive

Terry Brown
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Posted February 3, 2013 at 7:45PM

My harddrive is beginning to fail and so I went out and bought a new 2tb harddrive for my XP system, knowing that XP cannot access 2tb in one lump, I partitioned it into 4 x 500gb drives- so far- so good.

I then went to instal XP on the drive and found it was a 64 bit drive - nothing on the box to indicate this

XP will not install on a drive unless it is 32 bit or you have XP 64 bit. (or window 7 or 8)

Is there a third party software that will allow me to re-partition and format in either :Fat32 or NTFS 32 bit, or will I be wasting my time.

The drive will accept data(documts etc but not an install.

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Fruit Bat /\0/\

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Posted February 3, 2013 at 8:30PM

I think the problem is because it is a sata drive rather than anything to do with 64bit.

XP cannot see sata drive unless you load the sata drivers at the F6 prompt at the beginning if the install

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Fruit Bat /\0/\

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Posted February 3, 2013 at 8:31PM

or have you formatted it in a 64bit machine before trying to install XP?

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Terry Brown

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Posted February 3, 2013 at 10:16PM

Hi Fruitbat

This is a new harddrive, straight from the box (Purchased from PC World.)

My old drive is an IDE, so I never thought about trying SATA drivers- Where would I get them from?.

Terry

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Fruit Bat /\0/\

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Posted February 4, 2013 at 10:49PM

how did you partition it - in the achine you want to install xp in - from the xp cd?

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Terry Brown

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Posted February 5, 2013 at 9:40AM

Fruitbat.

I attached it to the machine and used disk management to format it while in windows.A 'knowledable' friend who works as a 'Technical advisor',in a well known store told me it was a 64 bit drive, so I assumed he knew what he was talking about.

I have finally found the solution, thanks to you reminding me that it was a SATA drive.I looked at Raid drivers as I thought that may be the problem (it wasn't).

Finally traced it to the BIOS where SATA had been disabled, set the BIOS setting for SATA to combined ( IDE + SATA) and that cured the problem.

Thanks for all your help.

Terry

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Fruit Bat /\0/\

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Posted February 5, 2013 at 10:14AM

Thanks for the feedback

I was worried that it may have come pre formatted as a GPT disk XP wouldn't see it to install on but could write data to it.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/gg463525.aspx

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lotvic

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Posted February 5, 2013 at 2:41PM

I don't understand the 'knowledable' friend who works as a 'Technical advisor' saying it was a 64bit harddrive - what's that all about? bearing in mind that it was brand new sata hard drive.

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Terry Brown

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Posted February 5, 2013 at 4:14PM

Lotvic

Thinking about it, could he have trying to push me to windows 7 / 8 or a new computer ?, as you may have guessed the shop was PCWorld.

Terry

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lotvic

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Posted February 5, 2013 at 5:01PM

Nothing surprises me now in stores that sell pcs, not since I was in a Comet store (before closures and troubles were news) and overheard assistant warning against free avg as 'it is full of viruses' and customer should 'buy the Norton antivirus program - which is on offer at the mo' so lucky you.....'

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