1tb to 29mb?

[redgerr]

Hello,
i have a 1tb hard drive that i just took out of one of my old computers that seems to be showing 29MB instead of the 1tb... i have looked at it through disk management however it seems that it does not pick the full drive up... when formatted nothing happens. thanks for your help in advance, SA

 

[sminlal]

What operating system are you using? Windows XP doesn't recognize large drives unless you have SP1 or later installed.

 

[redgerr]

vista 64 bit, i tried it on both my xp and vista computers as well... they didn't see either

 

[redgerr]

in hindsight i may remember trying to install an operating system to it and it failing... i deleted the partition that the os was on and it resulted in this.. the only problem with that idea is i would see more than just 29Mb...

 

[sminlal]

I wonder if the partition tables got corrupted. Can you post a screenshot of what the disk looks like in the lower right pane of Disk Management?

If you don't need any of the data on the drive then you could try deleting all of the partitions and then see if the resulting "unallocated space" shows up as 1TB.

 

[fzabkar]

Do you have a Gigabyte moherboard? If so, then your Gigabyte BIOS (Award ?) is trying to grab about 2000 sectors at the top end of the drive in order to store a backup copy of itself for BIOS recovery purposes.

To do this, it hides the copy in a Host Protected Area (HPA).

See ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Host_Protected_Area

... and "Xpress Bios Rescue":
http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Support/Motherboard/TechGuide_List.aspx?NewTechID=84

Unfortunately, the BIOS code has a bug that causes it to miscalculate the size of the drive. A 2TB drive is reduced to a capacity of 1TB, a 1.5TB drive becomes 500GB, and a 1TB drive is cut down to 32MB or so.

You can restore the full native capacity of your drive using HDAT2 or HDD Capacity Restore Tool:
http://www.hdat2.com/
http://hddguru.com/software/2007.07.20-HDD-Capacity-Restore-Tool/

See this thread for an explanation and solution:
http://forum.hddguru.com/lost-partition-hitachi-1gb-hdt721010sla360-t15662.html

Other references:
http://tw2005.giga-byte.com/MotherBoard/FileList/NewTech/tech_xpress3.htm
http://www.hdat2.com/hdat2_faq.html#q1

 

[redgerr]

I wonder if the partition tables got corrupted. Can you post a screenshot of what the disk looks like in the lower right pane of Disk Management?

If you don't need any of the data on the drive then you could try deleting all of the partitions and then see if the resulting "unallocated space" shows up as 1TB.

Ill show you a screen shot when i get home but it looks like any other drive... when i try to delete everything and unallocated all the space it still hows up this small ammount

Do you have a Gigabyte moherboard? If so, then your Gigabyte BIOS (Award ?) is trying to grab about 2000 sectors at the top end of the drive in order to store a backup copy of itself for BIOS recovery purposes.

To do this, it hides the copy in a Host Protected Area (HPA).

See ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Host_Protected_Area

... and "Xpress Bios Rescue":
http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Support/Motherboard/TechGuide_List.aspx?NewTechID=84

Unfortunately, the BIOS code has a bug that causes it to miscalculate the size of the drive. A 2TB drive is reduced to a capacity of 1TB, a 1.5TB drive becomes 500GB, and a 1TB drive is cut down to 32MB or so.

You can restore the full native capacity of your drive using HDAT2 or HDD Capacity Restore Tool:
http://www.hdat2.com/
http://hddguru.com/software/2007.07.20-HDD-Capacity-Restore-Tool/

See this thread for an explanation and solution:
http://forum.hddguru.com/lost-partition-hitachi-1gb-hdt721010sla360-t15662.html

Other references:
http://tw2005.giga-byte.com/MotherBoard/FileList/NewTech/tech_xpress3.htm
http://www.hdat2.com/hdat2_faq.html#q1

looks great i looked at the hddguru but im not sure it works on windows 7, ill just have to do that on one of my other computers i suppose... thanks! ill let you guys know what happens tonight

 

[redgerr]

I wonder if the partition tables got corrupted. Can you post a screenshot of what the disk looks like in the lower right pane of Disk Management?

If you don't need any of the data on the drive then you could try deleting all of the partitions and then see if the resulting "unallocated space" shows up as 1TB.

http://s1018.photobucket.com/albums/af302/The_Great_Sponge/?action=view&current=wtf_drive.png

theres a picture... im about to try the other things right now.. apparently it dosnt work on win 7 so im about to do it on a xp computer

 

[sminlal]

I suspect that fzabkar's onto something.

Failing that, my next suggestion would be to download and burn a LiveCD of Ubuntu and use it to clear the partition table on the drive.