Hard Drive size detects wrong 2

[rblue]

I have a Fujitsu MPE3064AT hard drive that is spec'd at 6.4GB. I have installed this drive on two different boards and it autodetects as 1.9GB. The first board was a Biostar and the current board is a PCChips. They are PIII boards, so I know there shouldn't be a BIOS issue with drive detection. (although one never knows...;-))

I manually set up the cylinder, head, sector settings for the drive in the BIOS.

When I run fdisk, the size is reflected properly. I'm not sure where fdisk gets this from.

When I install Red Hat 8.0, it only sees a 1.9 GB hard drive.

Drive is set up as master and is the only device on the primary IDE channel.

Any suggestions?

 

[TekTippy4U]

Does Fdisk say 100% of drive is being used?....go to fdisk /status....or just press "4"(?)..."View Partition Status"....
How many Partitions?...

I would suggest a BIOS update anyway and an AutoDetect setting, Whats the Date of BIOS?.....

Notification:
These are just "my" thoughts....and should be carefully measured against other opinions....I try very hard to impart correct info at all times.

 

[TekTippy4U]

Oh Yeh;

If your fdisk status says FAT16..that's as big as it gets on that partition......you could add 2-3 more partitions or
you could....
Convert Disk to FAT32(You'll need to delete and re-format--you'll lose all data on disc) if you use Fdisk......
Fat16 enables up to 2GB per partition...
Fat32 "Enables Large Disk Support" theoretically up to
a whopping 2,000+ Gigabytes, though in reality, an entirely diff story

Notification:
These are just "my" thoughts....and should be carefully measured against other opinions....I try very hard to impart correct info at all times.

 

[rblue]

The BIOS date is sometime in 2001.

When I first installed the drive I installed Mandrake Linux 9 and let it manage the partitions. It only saw 1.9GB of the drive.

I decided to switch to Red Hat 8, but before I did, I decided to run an fdisk to verify the drive size. Fdisk showed the correct drive size (6.4GB) with one non-DOS partition at 150 MB and a ext partition at 1.7 GB. The rest of the space was unaccounted for?!?! I tried to blow away the partitions, but fdisk kept complaining that there were virtual drives in the ext partition, even though the partition check showed none.

I gave up and booted into red hat and let it reformat the drive. Again, it only saw 1.9GB of the drive.

I had thought about the BIOS upgrade route, but if this is a 2001 BIOS that can't see a 6GB drive... Well, let's just say I won't be keeping the board around if that's the issue.

 

[wolluf]

Try a binary zero fill (if no vital data) -

http://www.fel.fujitsu.com/support/disk/software/erase.zip

& then try fdisking & formatting again.

 

[rblue]

wolluf, you da man! I had thought about a low level format, but the onlly utility I had was the one for my western digital drives.

Thanks

 

[Peahippo]

These show hdd specs for the Fujitsu MPE3064AT:

http://www.search4hardware.com/3/p_3_340_Fujitsu_MPE3064AT.html

http://www.fujitsu.com.au/FAL/CDA/1,1531,339~742,00.html

This is the manufacturer's page for various utilities:

http://www.fujitsu.com.au/FAL/CDA/0,1531,341,00.html

... which shows 4:

IDE FJQT diagnostic software
IDE FJErase utility
IDE utility (UDMA 33/66 change configuration utility)
SCSI FATool diagnostic utility

The page talks about low-level formatting (which may not apply to the MPE3064AT):

http://www.fel.fujitsu.com/home/faqs.asp?L=en&XID=49&CID=1

... which shows you want to actually "initialize" the drive in "Fujitsu speak".

You will want to get the FJDT (Fujitsu ATA Diagnostic Tool):

http://www.fel.fujitsu.com/home/drivers.asp?L=en&XID=94&CID=1

... for confirming tings are okay after initializing the drive.

Finally, here's the FJ-IDE Drive Initializer Utility itself:

http://www.fel.fujitsu.com/home/drivers.asp?L=en&XID=61&CID=1

... which seems to be as low-level as Fujitsu allows you to get.

I would confidently try these things. Let us know how things turn out for you.

 

[rblue]

Have a little experience with Fujitsu drives do we Peahippo?

Thanks for all the great links. I'll play with them when I get home.

 

[rblue]

Thanks to Peahippo for the link to the drive documentation. Turns out that even though the jumper settings were printed on the drive, the orientation of the drive wasn't specified. So, the jumpers were set in the right pattern, but on the wrong side of the jumper block.

Once I knew heads from tails, I reset the jumpers and now I can see all 6.4 GB of the drive. Thanks again.