Barracuda XT, Barracuda, Barracuda Green, DiamondMax and other desktop SATA and IDE drives

[djkatalyst00]

Hello,

I recently upgraded my motherboard to a GIGABYTE EP45-UDR3 and before I had done that, my Vista OS was reporting my hard drive as ~298GB. After upgrading the motherboard, the filesystem became corrupted so I reformatted, only this time the OS only recognized the drive as 279GB. I decided that a 19GB loss was pretty significant and that I should do something about it.

I spoke to Seagate via webchat and they recommended that I use SeaTools to zero fill the drive and then try reformatting. This procedure has been of no avail. The drive is still reporting 279GB.

[fzabkar]

Try the "Set Capacity to MAX" command in SeaTools for DOS:

http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=201271

Does BIOS show the correct capacity?

See the following article.

Host Protected Area:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Host_protected_area

Message Edited by fzabkar on 05-11-2009 02:20 PM

[Cantbecanit]

Which MB did you have originally?

I suspect the missing capacity is missing because of the change in boards, did you do an O/S recovery?

No doubt a full format and reload will sort it out, and it's probably the best way to go 100% clean with the new hardware.

[djkatalyst00]

Set Capacity to Native MAX command in SeaTools for DOS failed. It gave me a message along the lines of "Make sure the drive has been power cycled."

SeaTools was reporting the drive as ~300 GB but it is DEFINITELY a 320 GB drive. I know there is a difference between decimal 320 GB and binary - even still the drive should report ~298 GB.

Thanks for the link though, I'll be sure to read more about this.

After advisement from Seagate, I "zero filled" the drive using SeaTools and then did a "full erase" which took over an hour. Drive still was showing the incorrect capacity.

I've decided that since 19 GB was less than I had free when I was utilizing my system before my hardware change, having the system running is more important than playing with the hard drive right now.

Message Edited by djkatalyst00 on 11-05-2009 06:47 PM

[Cantbecanit]

I thinkI know what this is now, when you reformatted the drive did you delete all the partitions and make one new small minimum size one?

If you didn't I think you'll find this is why, you have 2x 8-9mb partitions in existance.

[djkatalyst00]

After I ran the full disk erase from Seagate's SeaTools, I made a fresh install of Windows 7 and created a partition of the maximum size possible. I don't recall making any smaller partitions. There should only have been one partition.

[fzabkar]

djkatalyst00, you say that "the file system became corrupted" after you upgraded the motherboard.

I doubt that your problem is as described in the following threads, but they may still be worth a look:

http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/message?board.id=ata_drives&thread.id=10454

http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/message?board.id=ata_drives&thread.id=1685

[fzabkar]

Does this article offer a plausible explanation:

http://tw2005.giga-byte.com/MotherBoard/FileList/NewTech/tech_xpress3.htm

"Xpress Recovery 2 is the revolutionary feature designed for hard drive data security. With Xpress Recovery 2, user is able to backup all his system files and personal files such as mp3 songs, images, word documents or movie files that were stored in the hard drive into a single image file. The image file is stored in the hard drive. If user experienced system crashed, all he has to do is to call up the Xpress Recovery 2 feature from GIGABYTE driver CD during system boot up, and with few simple steps the system is recovered back as original."

I suspect that the Gigabyte BIOS may have stolen 20GB of space at the top end of the HD and then "locked" the drive's DCO (Device Configuration Overlay). This would prevent SeaTools from restoring the drive's full native capacity. The solution would be to install the HD in a system with a friendlier BIOS, ie one that doesn't lock the drive, and then use SeaTools to "set capacity to max".