Why is my 80gb now a 20gb?

[Kenjijonez]

I am really confused. My bios picks up my WD800BB-55HEA0 HDD, but, the pc only recognizes it as a 20 GB. please help me someone. Maybe hard drive gone funky??

thanks guys...

K

 

[vacunita]

Did you partition it?

If you go into Disk Management (Right Click My Computer->Manage->Disk Management.) does it show its correct size, but show a part as not allocated?

If not can you give us a little more background when did it happen what did you do before it happened etc...

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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.

 

[Kenjijonez]

LOL....well, i'm actually running SuSE Linux 10.1 because i hate windows...

i've actually contacted Western Digital, and, hopefully they'll have a solution for me. I'm thinking maybe i'll just swap it out. Still under warranty.

Thanks anyway

K

 

[vacunita]

The Same still applies SuSE Linux should have a Disk Manager that should show you the distribution of your Drive. so again i asked, is it partitioned? did you do anything prior to it happening?

----------------------------------
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.

 

[strella]

Try googling at suse support for hard drive install.

--

Does Suse have qtparted?

Try "start", "run" then enter
qtparted

If Suse has it, then google on qtparted for instructions.

 

[cdogg]

Ken,
You've asked us why an 80GB drive is only showing up as 20GB, yet you haven't told us if the drive worked fine originally or if you've tried to delete all existing partitions and start over. Without details, we can't truly assess what happened.

Your drive should have the following specs showing in the BIOS:

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=708&p_created=1037284151

If you haven't already, also try resetting your BIOS to the default settings.

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[Kenjijonez]

Well, the drive was working just perfectly fine, and then, after i tried accessing it in Linux, when i booted into windows, for some reason, it started behaving as a 20Gb drive. my BIOS even picks it up as a 20GB. So, there's obviously something wrong physically with the drive, but, HOW THE HELL DID IT GO WRONG ALL OF A SUDDEN????

i cant even send it back to Western Digital, because its passed its 3 year warranty period. thanks for your help guys. Western Digital couldnt even give me a reason for it. That is why i only buy Seagate now...

Later

 

[vacunita]

Did you change the jumper configuration? Maybe it got set to size limit slave or something like that. Have you checked the Drive is still o.k. running Western Digital's diagnostic tools on it my yield some information. It might have suddenly developed quite a few bad sectors, and as such is no longer able to present its original size.

----------------------------------
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.

 

[cdogg]

Some hard drives do have a jumper setting that limits the number of accessible clusters (actually, heads & cylinders). So perhaps when you were playing around with a Linux configuration, you changed the position of the hard drive and/or set the wrong jumper setting.

Definitely worth checking...

Other than that, the partition table could have gotten hosed. Are you sure you didn't try to modify the hard drive when you setup Linux or use any 3rd-party resizing tool such as Partition Magic?

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884