connecting an external drive

[homer75]

I have connected a 160Gb Maxtor drive fitted in a caddy via usb2. My pc only 'sees' approx 32 Gb - I have formatted the drive on another pc which sees it at it's proper capacity via IDE cable link but when I connect to my new pc via usb2 I get the above problem. Is this a limitation of the usb controller or is there a solution? Any advice greatly appreciated.

I am using xp service pack2 and machine is a fairly new HP Pavilion

[stevie21]

The only time I've ever had this problem was when I had the jumper settings on the back of the hard drive wrong but this doesn't seem likely in your case unless on one PC your hard drive is the 2nd drive on the IDE cable (slave ) and on the USB it needs to be master?
That's a complete guess : it's likely to be something totally different.

What does BIOS say when it's connected via the USB and do you have any instructions with the caddy?
You can't connect to the new PC via an IDE cable? I think that this'll be faster than usb2

[kempie]

Historically, there are a few reasons for the 32GB hard drive capacity barrier; namely BIOS, FAT32 and LBA.

This goes into more detail and may point you in the right direction for a solution.

BTW USB2.0 (Hi-Speed) has a maximum data rate of 480 Mbps which is more than enough to handle the maximum IDE (ATA/133) of 133 Mbps, especially when you consider a 7200 RPM hard drive is unlikely to consistently attain a burst speed of greater than 90 Mbps.

[fo3nix]

as kempie says, it's probably because you've formatted it as FAT32. format it as NTFS, and it should be fine.

[homer75]

drive is set to master for usb caddy link and was formatted using NTFS but still coming up against the 33.8 Gb problem