Tom's Hardware > Forum > Storage > Hard Disks > HDD only seeing 31.8/250 GB
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koga73   09-29-2008 at 05:19:53 PM

Hey, so i have a fairly old (a few years) 250GB hdd. It is the slave drive in my computer. Previously i had three partitions on the computer. 100gb off the 250g for xp, 150gb off the 250g for storage, and 60gb off a 60g hdd for storage. I just reinstalled windows on the 60gb hdd and the 250gb hdd is only being detected as 31.8gb. It seems odd that the rest could have just "gone bad" in the time that i reinstalled windows since it was working before. I have tried using MaxBlast 5, which did nothing except wipe off the 31.8gb that it saw. Any suggestions to what i can do to get the rest of my hdd back.

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killerb255   09-29-2008 at 05:37:14 PM
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Is your new XP install running any Service Packs? Is the drive running on a dedicated disk controller? Is it running on an auxiliary disk controller (like a separate Promise controller) built onto the motherboard?

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koga73   09-29-2008 at 05:45:10 PM
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SP3
The drive is a slave on primary IDE

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waffle911   09-29-2008 at 05:55:06 PM
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Seems odd that it would cut off right at 32GB as if limited by the disk format.
Did you reformat the disk in FAT32 using the included utility in XP? That might have something to do with it. DiskUtility is limited to creating FAT32 partitions of 32GB or less, despite the ability of XP to read and write to FAT32 partitions larger than that. Try formatting the disk as NTFS.

 

But I don't really know anything regarding the matter, so I might have overlooked something. If it works, great! If not, well I know nothing! :P


Message edited by waffle911 on 09-29-2008 at 05:56:30 PM
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koga73   09-29-2008 at 06:50:22 PM
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Well, i used maxblast and did NTFS. Also... i just ran the seagate sea tools on the hdd and it passed all of the tests. Even the bios reads the hdd as the 31.8 (And it seems that the .8 flucuates. After each restart it jumps to .4, or once it even went to 33.5.


Message edited by koga73 on 09-29-2008 at 06:51:30 PM
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Horhe   09-29-2008 at 07:06:02 PM
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On some HDD there is a jumper switch that limits it's capacity to 32 GB. Check to see if the jumper is put on slave.

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koga73   09-29-2008 at 07:36:13 PM
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I havn't changed the jumper since i reinstalled windows. I checked also and it is on slave

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megamanx00   09-29-2008 at 07:50:32 PM
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Since you're running it as a slave you are also limited by that 60GB drive as far as the way the disk controller interfaces with your hard drives. Try disconnecting the 60GB drive and setting the 250 as your primary drive, then delete the disk partitions and format it.

------------------------------ Playing X-Men Origins: Wolverine Athlon 64 X2 5000+ @3.24 Brisbane | GIGABYTE GA-MA790X-DS4 | 4GB Mushkin DDR2 1066 | Plextor 760A| 2x 3850 512M CF| WD 1TB Black| Fortron Blue Storm II 500W | APEVIA X-Dreamer Black | Win XP Pro & Vista Buisness 32bit
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koga73   09-29-2008 at 08:03:11 PM
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Alright, well I set the 250gb as the master (with jumper), completly disconnected the other, and the Bios and Maxblast are seeing it as 33.8gb. This is so annoying...

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Shadow703793   09-29-2008 at 08:28:29 PM
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Could be a motherboard BIOS limitation? Mind listing full specs?

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http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3553/3818083596_1a772f7162_o.gif
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Codesmith   09-29-2008 at 08:28:45 PM
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There are various was to limit a drive to 32 GB for compatibility reasons.
Check the jumpers settings the is usually a 32 GB clip.

Boot from both the manufacturers diagnostic and setup utilities.
Check to see if there are any relevant configuration settings.
Use one of them to write zero's to the entire drive.

Don't use the setup utility to partition and format the drive. Format the zeroed drive using Windows Disc Manager or Acronis Disc Director.

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koga73   09-29-2008 at 08:36:37 PM
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This article fixed my problem!

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index. [...] 04090aRCRD

I had to download seatools for dos and reset the capacity

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