I have a new Maxtor 2f020j0 20 Gig hard disk which the BIOS and various disk utilities, including Partition Magic 8, report as being a 6.4 Gig. It was supplied as a warranty replacement for a Compaq PC which had a 6.4 drive. Have tried in other machines with same result. Wonder if this has been done at the factory and is there any firmware utility which can unlock the full capacity? This is a single platter, single head drive which is sold in 20 Gig, 30 Gig and 40 Gig capacities so maybe it can be turned into a 40 Gig. I would be interested if anyone knows how?
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Maxtor 2f020j0 20 Gb hard disk capped to 6.4 Gig 1
- Thread starter Davic
- Start date
Two ways. Check the jumpers on the drive to see if it's been manually capped that way for compatibility.
Get a BIOS update so your system can see the whole drive.
Who knows what evil Compaq has used to cap a 20 gig at 6...utterly ridiculous... Cheers,
Jim
Get a BIOS update so your system can see the whole drive.
Who knows what evil Compaq has used to cap a 20 gig at 6...utterly ridiculous... Cheers,
Jim
Look on the back of the hard drive and make sure it IS a 20 GB hard drive: on the back of the hard drive there should be a chart saying CYLINDERS, HEADS, and SECTORS:
Once the hard disk is low-level formatted, which is usually done at the factory, then the CAPACITY of the drive or the total number of bytes on the drive can be calculated. The calculation involves the number cylinders, the number of heads and the number of sectors per track. With these three values we can calculate the total number of usable bytes on the drive. The number of cylinders multiplied by the number of heads is equivalent to the total number of tracks. This value is then multiplied by the number of sectors per track resulting in the total number of sectors. This value is then multiplied by 512 which is the number of bytes that data can be stored in per sector. This formula is represented by C * H *S *512.
There is about 1,000 MB per gigabyte. So, a 20GB hard drive should have *about* 20,000 MB.
Once the hard disk is low-level formatted, which is usually done at the factory, then the CAPACITY of the drive or the total number of bytes on the drive can be calculated. The calculation involves the number cylinders, the number of heads and the number of sectors per track. With these three values we can calculate the total number of usable bytes on the drive. The number of cylinders multiplied by the number of heads is equivalent to the total number of tracks. This value is then multiplied by the number of sectors per track resulting in the total number of sectors. This value is then multiplied by 512 which is the number of bytes that data can be stored in per sector. This formula is represented by C * H *S *512.
There is about 1,000 MB per gigabyte. So, a 20GB hard drive should have *about* 20,000 MB.
- Thread starter
- #6
Thanks for your answers. Some further info:
1. There is no Cyl/ Head/ Sector chart on the drive.
2. There is a capping jumper, which reduces the size to 2.1 Gig (the old FAT limit)if connected (obviously I have left this off).
3. Have tried formatting FAT32, still 6.4 Gig
4. Have installed on a home built Athlon 1.4 Gig with latest BIOS, still only sees 6.4 Gig.
1. There is no Cyl/ Head/ Sector chart on the drive.
2. There is a capping jumper, which reduces the size to 2.1 Gig (the old FAT limit)if connected (obviously I have left this off).
3. Have tried formatting FAT32, still 6.4 Gig
4. Have installed on a home built Athlon 1.4 Gig with latest BIOS, still only sees 6.4 Gig.
Chalk it up to Compaq stupidity. They've probably hard wired the drive to that limit. Cheers,
Jim
Jim
Have your done FDISK and just creating one primary partition.
I'm not implying anything, but sometimes people create multiple partitions, and then when they try to see the size of the hard drive, they forget that they are only seeing the size of the volume, or the size of the partition they specify. Just make sure you run FDISK and delete ALL partitions (if this applys to you) ONLY IF you want to completely erase your hard drive. If you have an operating system installled, or do not wish to format your hard drive, do not delete any partitions.
If you want ms-dos to show you all your partitions, at the boot up promt or runnning this command in md-dos: C:\windows\fdisk /status
this will just display the volumes and total capacity of the drive.
Also your could try FDISK /mbr. This *might* have something to do with it. fdisk /mbr destroys and recreates the master boot record.
Remember if you do delete any partitions and recreate new ones, you MUST format the drive before you may use it!
I'm not implying anything, but sometimes people create multiple partitions, and then when they try to see the size of the hard drive, they forget that they are only seeing the size of the volume, or the size of the partition they specify. Just make sure you run FDISK and delete ALL partitions (if this applys to you) ONLY IF you want to completely erase your hard drive. If you have an operating system installled, or do not wish to format your hard drive, do not delete any partitions.
If you want ms-dos to show you all your partitions, at the boot up promt or runnning this command in md-dos: C:\windows\fdisk /status
this will just display the volumes and total capacity of the drive.
Also your could try FDISK /mbr. This *might* have something to do with it. fdisk /mbr destroys and recreates the master boot record.
Remember if you do delete any partitions and recreate new ones, you MUST format the drive before you may use it!
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- #9
Davic:
We have twelve of this "capped" disks (from Compaq replaces too). I' think theire limited by firmware version. All we need is a firmware to replace the "VAM51JJ". Compaq ServicePaq SP14170 provides firmware for 20Gb Maxtor's disks. I' trying to modify the Update.bat file to fit to our disk.
Stay in contact!!
Martín
Buenos Aires, Argentina
We have twelve of this "capped" disks (from Compaq replaces too). I' think theire limited by firmware version. All we need is a firmware to replace the "VAM51JJ". Compaq ServicePaq SP14170 provides firmware for 20Gb Maxtor's disks. I' trying to modify the Update.bat file to fit to our disk.
Stay in contact!!
Martín
Buenos Aires, Argentina
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