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

[Athrill]

Hello,

I'm sure this type of issue has been experienced by others and I'm hoping to find the reason and/or a solution. Below is the info for my drive, OS and installation.

OS:  Windows XP x64

System: SuperMicro workstation - Dual Quad Core Intel 64-bit Xeon, 1333MHz FSB, Intel 5000X (Greencreek) Chipset

HD: Barracuda XT - ST32000641AS (2 TB)

Primary drive: No

File system: NTFS, default allocation

Partitions: 1 (@100%)

Compression:  Yes

Drive type: Basic (not dynamic or gpt)

Partition and format method: OS only (no Seagate utilities)

I installed a brand new ST32000641AS internal 2TB drive and formatted it. After doing so, i checked the drive properties and see the following information reported:

Used space: 901,013,303,296 (839 GB)
Free space: 1,099,382,984,704 (0.99 TB)
Capacity: 1.81 TB

I have not copied any data/files yet to this drive.  Why does Windows show the drive as using 900 GB when there isn't anything on the drive yet? Is there a setting i need to change in the OS or will using any Seagate software help correct this?  Maybe I neeed to format the drive in a different way or create more than one partition?  I'm at a loss.

Many thanks for any help,

Athrill

[Cantbecanit]

Is your board an nForce chipped one?

http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vistahardware/thread/17f887ee-7689-4dc3-9237-ee7f3a...

When you formatted it did you set a partition, and did you check what size it was or simply clicked yes.

I'd check the MB site for a bios upgrade also, as I don't know what you are using it with I have to guess posibilities for now.

Looking at it, I would think the 64 bit XP could be the problem, and I would look into that while awaiting other answers.

[Athrill]

Hello Cantbecanit and thank you for the quick reply,

My board is not a nForce chip. i updated my original post, adding some info on my board.  the full specs can be found here:

http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon1333/5000X/X7DAE.cfm

I have four other drives installed and am using the new Seagate as a backup drive only.  I did check the partition size before clicking continue, it showed the correct partition size (approximately 1.9 TB).  Please let me know if i can supply any other information that might be helpful.  i'll check the bios settings and do some web searches for similar issues related to Win Xp 64-bit.

thanks again,

Athrill

[Cantbecanit · Accepted solution]

As you have nothing of yours on it right now, I would be re-formatting it, to save hassle do it within Windows in comp management, and the partition needs to be set to minimum, so it should only be a very small partition rather than 1.9TB, cos that is the full formatted size, to save you time, only do a quick format, don't bother with a hours at a time full one, and let me know how it goes, iirc the partition needs only be 8mb, the rest will then become the visible drive part for the files you want to store.

[Athrill]

Thank you Cantbecanit for your second reply and solution.

This seems to have worked.  I partitioned and formatted the drive as you suggested--the first partition @8MB and a second partition at the remaining maximum space (1.81 TB) and used quick format.

I am wondering why a full format did not work the first time when i installed, partitioned and formatted the drive. Could the drive have bad sectors and that is why Windows was reporting 900 MB used after using the full format method?

~Athrill

[Athrill]

After reading about the differences between a quick and full hard disk format, i found that the quick format skips the testing for bad sectors. so, after reading this, i performed a manual chkdsk on this drive, below are the results. It seems the reason the drive reported 900 MB in use is because there were that many MB in bad sectors found when I did a full format of the drive.  what now?

Microsoft Windows [Version 5.2.3790]
(C) Copyright 1985-2003 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>cd \

C:\>chkdsk e: /r
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is BACKUP2TB.

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 5)...
68208 file records processed.
File verification completed.
705 large file records processed.
0 bad file records processed.
0 EA records processed.
0 reparse records processed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 5)...
259078 index entries processed.
Index verification completed.
5 unindexed files processed.
CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stag
68208 security descriptors processed.
Security descriptor verification completed.
6085 data files processed.
CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)..
68192 files processed.
File data verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5).
476949910 free clusters processed.
Free space verification is complete.
Adding 219943123 bad clusters to the Bad Clust
Correcting errors in the Volume Bitmap.
Windows has made corrections to the file syste

1953375231 KB total disk space.
  45357416 KB in 61392 files.
     24348 KB in 6087 indexes.
 879772492 KB in bad sectors.
    193827 KB in use by the system.
     65536 KB occupied by the log file.
1028027148 KB available on disk.

      4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
 488343807 total allocation units on disk.
 257006787 allocation units available on disk.

[Cantbecanit]

Chkdsk will do that from time to time, download HDD Sentinal and see what it says about the drives condition.

[fzabkar]

AFAICS, you are hitting a 1 TiB limit, either in the BIOS or in Windows.

Seagate's product manual states that the guaranteed number of sectors for the ST32000641AS is 3907029168.

A capacity of 1 TiB would equate to 2^31 sectors at 512 bytes per sector.

In Windows, 1KB = 1024 bytes.

Therefore, the total capacity beyond the 1 TiB point is ...

(3907029168 - 2^31) x 512 / 1024 = 879 772 760 KB

http://www.google.com/search?q=%283907029168+-+2%5E31%29+x+512+%2F+1024

This is very close to the figure of "879772492 KB in bad sectors" reported by CHKDSK.

Barracuda XT Series SATA Product Manual, Rev. A:
http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/support/disc/manuals/desktop/Barracuda%20XT/100586689a.pdf