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Why did my large hard disk shrink to 128 gigabytes after running DBAN?

April 26, 2017DBAN Gigabytes large running shrink

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Why did my large hard disk shrink to 128 gigabytes after running DBAN?

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The Microsoft Windows installation media that you are using only has ATA-5 support, which has a 128 gigabyte limit. The operating system installer must have ATA-6 support to use all of a disk that is larger than 128 gigabytes. The solution is to reinstall with Windows 2000 SP4 media or Windows XP SP1 media. If you do not have recent Microsoft Windows media, then research a “windows slipstream install” for instructions about how to create it. Alternatively, you can install to a 128 gig partition, apply the service pack that provides 48-bit LBA, and then enlarge the filesystem afterwards. Microsoft documents the issue in KB305098 for Windows 2000 and KB303013 for Windows XP. Seagate gives the issue full treatment in their Windows 137GB Capacity Barrier document.