EX Series - Common Questions » Hardware Issues

I've added a large (200GB) hard drive to my DVR, but my system is not seeing all of the available space... only 130 GB or so. What gives? I'm running the latest DVR software. Also, it seems that my data becomes corrupt and I have to reformat the drive from time to time.

This is a Windows 2000 and XP issue. DVRs installed with Windows2000 CDs with SP-2 or earlier included do not have 48-bit addressing enabled (same goes for some systems with the original release CDs of Windows XP). This 48-bit addressing is how Windows accesses hard drives with more than 137 GB of storage. Without this addressing enabled, Windows will misread the size of the drive and eventually cause corruptions in the data.

Even though a system may eventually be updated with Windows 2000 SP-4, 48-bit addressing is NOT enabled by default - it must be done manually (under certain circumstances, some Windows XP systems may require manual intervention). Also, even if a large drive came from a system that did have 48-bit addressing enabled and was working properly, if it is transferred to a non-48-bit enabled system, corruption WILL occur, so be very careful about moving large hard drives from system to system.

See the Microsoft articles below on how to do this for your DVR

How to enable 48-bit Logical Block Addressing support for ATAPI disk drives in Windows XP - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/303013

48-Bit LBA Support for ATAPI Disk Drives in Windows 2000 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305098

Last update: 2005-03-30 10:25
Author: Scott Neily

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