200 GB HD problem... bizzare

[btbenev]

I have a 200 GB Seagate hard drive, regardless of what computer I connect it to it shows up as a 137,XXX,XXX,XXX byte (128GB) hard drive. I initially thought this was a matter of my BIOS being out of date or my OS not being fully patched, but as I tried to rectify those issues, the problem remained, so I moved the drive to another computer and the problem remained, i have now connected this to 10+ computers and the drive is always shown as 128 GB with no additional space to build a partition on. Please let me know if you have any thoughts on this. (When the drive was new it appeared as a full 200 GB, but this was some number of years ago...) Is there a firmware update for these drives? Thanks!

 

[wahnula]

Connect it to a WinXP SP2 PC and format it. Check out this thread:

thread751-1375613

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[btbenev]

Yes, I have done that. Under Disk Management it shows up with the dimensions I listed previously. Recently I bought a MacBook Pro, I tried connecting it to that also out of curiousity but again, the drive shows up as a 128 GB drive. No matter what OS, or update level, the highest drive capacity I see available on this drive is 128 GB (looking at disk size, not partition size). I am thinking the firmware on the drive may have become damaged. I am running it through DBAN now not expecting any change, but hoping for one...

 

[vacunita]

Try a Third Party utility like Partition Magic see if it can pick up the full size of the drive for you to format.





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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[btbenev]

I just tried using partition commander and again, I only saw the familiar 127.99 GB... Any thoughts?

 

[vacunita]

Have you tried Seagate's own tools. Maybe DiscWizard can identify the full size of your hard drive and set it up correctly.

----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[m1ckG]

Just wondering you state the size is showing as 128GB inside of windows, what does it state from the BIOS?

MCSA

 

[wolluf]

Echoing vacunita - I'd definitely use the dos version of Seatools - have found the windows version ineffective in a number of situations.

Also you said you were running dban - which wipes the drive, including mbr & partition tables - & that made no difference?


Just a thought - lots of drives have a 'limiting' jumper to enable the drive to be used on older motherboards which can't see their full size. 128GB is one of those limits - so you haven't got such a jumper set?

 

[btbenev]

Vacunita -
I have tried seagate's tools, I don't recall what it determined so i'll run through that again to get specifics...

M1ckG -
The BIOS also sees the drive as 128 GB (consistantly on many dissimilar machines ranging from a few years old to less than a month old).

Wolluf -
Yeah, a full DBAN wipe resolved absolutely nothing... I've tried many combinations of jumper settings, I am not reluctant to repeat any testing though if anyone has suggestions. Presently I only have the jumper for "Master" on.

All -
I have so far neglected to include the drive's model, it is ST3200822A Barracuda 7200.7 200Gbytes

I will post results from the DOS version of SeaTools once I have them.

Thank you for all of the suggestions so far.

 

[btbenev]

Ok, SeaTools shows me that the drive is configured for 48 bit addressing, but the drive is reported as having a capacity of 137 GB I suppose this software just calculates the size using 1000B = 1KB instead of 1024B = 1KB

One interesting find in the SeaTools app, the "Max Native Address" is 390721967 and the "Number of LBAs" is 268433407.

I have tried correcting this through the SeaTools application without any success... Any thoughts?

 

[wolluf]

That model has a 5 year warranty according to Seagate site - is yours less than 5 years old? - if so, I'd get it replaced.

There have been one or two posts like this I've seen over the last several years - lost capacity for no good reason, tried everything - and I haven't seen a resolution.

 

[btbenev]

Seagate's site says I'm out of warranty, I think I bought it a few months prior to the 5 year warranty's introduction. maybe I can find one to swap PCB's with.

 

[m1ckG]

Generally in the past any time I have had a HDD reporting incorrect size in the BIOS the drive has been beyond repair, I would suggest a new drive.

MCSA

 

[btbenev]

Thanks, that's what I was thinking, but as the drive *seems* to be working properly in all other aspects I was hoping for a way to re-build the drive's firmware. I agree though. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

 

[CapitalData]

I would suggest you replacing that drive. We've seen such cases in the lab. Firmware corruption. Can be done, and in reality it's not a big deal; however problem may come back.

Best Regards,
Karen
Capita Data Recovery Inc.

http://www.capitaldatarecovery.com

 

[acewarlock]

Drives are so cheap now it's not worth the time or effort.




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