Legit Reviews

Hi All,
Maxtor have sent me their SATA Ultra 16MB 7200RPM 300GB DiamondMax for review. This will essentially be my first real HDD review. I could really use some help on which benchmarks to run with this drive?

First thing I did wrong was "failed to follow the instructions" (again) which resulted in my putting fresh WinXP isntall with drivers without using the MAxBlast3 software. MaxBalst3 allows you to access the full 300GB. So basically I have a 137GB drive.

First: does anyone know if there's a work around to enable the drive's full capacity without loosing my data?

Second: can someone recommend a list of benchmarks you would like to see here at LegitReviews for example?

you can use Sandra's storage benchmark, but most people recommend HD Tach for storage benchmarking.
I'm kind of confused as to why you had an issue with the 137 GB issue, you definitely need to slipstream a copy of XP with SP1 and 2 on it.
My recommendation would be to use MaxBlast 3, reformat the drive and start over with a slipstreamed installation

You said you were confused? Do you mean by installing WinXP the drive should have been detected as 300GB? My Home Edition was pre SP2. It was originally read bythe BIOS as 300GB which is why I missed the MaxiBlast install issue. This is my first drive larger then 120GB so I've never encountered this issue before. I do remember discussing it once but spaced it.

You need at least SP1 for it to be recognized as the full 300GB drive. Windows installs its own drivers and programs that set up your system.....this wasn't a problem until 2 years ago, when drives over 120GB started showing up.

I'm not sure if you are going to need to format the drive or not....I'm thinking yes. You might try a program like Partition Magic, it might give you the ability to resix=ze the partition on your HDD.

there are some you might be able to install sp2 on and then use norton ghost to expand the size of the partition

actually you don't need SP2, just SP1..... SP1 was the release that recognized larger drive sizes. I'd recommend Partition Magic 8, i use it to resize drives and partitions all the time. I used to really like Ghost, but had a lot of issues with it when I switched over totally to SATA drives, so I gave it up.