Big Disk Limitations in XP (over 137gb)

I bought a couple of the IBM 185g drives and found I couldn't format a partition if it was beyond 128gb (maybe it's 137gb)

Checked and this is supported by my bios but still Windows XP wouldn't let me do it.

Solution:

Make sure you are running at least XPsp1 and then enable 48-bit LBA support (which supposedly  is only available in Windows XP):

SPECIAL NOTE: If your bios doesn't support 48bit LBA or if you aren't running at least SP1 level XP, you will hose the install by doing this.

   1. Launch regedit.
   2. Open the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Atapi\Parameters
        registry subkey.
   3. Add a REG_DWORD value name EnableBigLba and set its value to 1.
   4. Exit regedit.
   5. Reboot.

Good luck!