new harddrive

[jabie5]

i have just bought a new 160 gig hard drive and a external usb case.problem is i have been told i need to fdisk and format it before xp will pick it up.

now ive tried fdisk but when i go to format it shows as a 127 gig hard drive which is the max size that xp will recognize.
There is a new fdisk version 1.21, but i couldn't get it to work properly (still only a 127 gig drive),then i got a util fron the maufacturers web site(western digital) which i finally got to work and now shows as a 160 gig harddrive
But when i right click on the drive and format it gets 75% f the way through and stops then my pc freezes,i would say it has roughly reached 127 gig.

this is driving me crazy
any help please
johnny

[Neo]

Are you formating the HD while in the case? If your system already has a booting HD, then just hook it up, and format it throught computer managment.

[Van Nugent]

Your mobo's BIOS and the OS must recognize drives that are larger than 137GB. If your mobo's BIOS doesn't support large HDD's, you can use the utility that comes with the drive (or download it from the HD manufacturer's website). And you must be running WinXP SP1.