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WD200BB Hard Drives showing up as 10GB?!!? Help!

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Lonely Raven

If you traded with me please leave me Heatware Sen
Joined
Feb 2, 2002
Location
Wheaton, IL
Ok, here is the deal. I got some overstock hard drives from Compaq.
I have 4 WD200BB 20GB hard drives.

Except some supergenius somehow managed to "Cripple" these hard drives
down to 10GB for whatever purpose they were originally intended!!
No matter what machine I put them into, no matter what BIOS, no
matter how I format it. It comes up as 10GB.

I'm no n00b so please don't tell me to use a drive overlay or
something. I know what I'm lookin at here.

I figure it's probably a Firmware tweak that was done in order to
supply 10GB hard drives for OEM systems that would flake if they
saw a hard drive larger then what they expected.

Just to prove this is not just cheap crack at work, I also have a
Maxtor D740X-6L with a Part number: MX6L040J2
If you look that up it's the 40GB ATA-133 Maxtor hard drive without
the "QuiteDrive" or whatever they call that. When I pulled off the
Compaq Spares sticker, underneath it even said 40GB AT Maxtor D740X-6L
But the ******* comes up as a 10GB hard drive!!!

So I seem to have gotten a WHOLE BATCH of crippled Hard Drives.

I figure Firmware updates might restore these drives to what they are
supposed to be, but for the life of me I can't seem to find this stuff
on the respective companies web pages!!

Anyone have any better suggestions as to fixes? Or know where I can
find the Firmware updates for these drives?

PS I've already searched Compaqs Firmware updates. They only seem to
put out a firmware update after a screw up has costed them several
thousands...so this particular update doesn't seem to exist.

Any help is GREATLY appreciated!!
 
Have you tried looking at them in fdisk? Maybe it just has 1 10gig partition and the rest is unallocated.
 
(sigh)

No, this is for real. The BIOS, FDISK, GDISK, and any utility I run
past it shows it as 10GB.

I'm no n00b. I've been doing this longer then most of you could
reach the keyboard!

Sorry. I don't mean to sound like an *******. I just though I'd
made it clear that it's not a simple FDISK issue.
 
This might be a stupid question, but are the hdds labeled correctly? Are you 100% that they are 20 gigs and not some 10 gig ones with a 20 gig sticker slapped on it?
 
Yeah, that's why I peeled the sticker off the 40GB Maxtor which
was mixed in this batch...
 
Unfortunetly, I dont think theres anything you can do. I've heard of this situation before, where the drives have heads disabled from the factory to oem's. So intead of all the platters being accessible, only one or two are used. I've never heard of anyone re-enabling them though. The only way I can think of is; a) hack the bios on the hard drive; b) send them back to the manufacturer and see if maybe they'll replace/repair them, ie "I purchased these drives thinking they were 40gb, but thier only 10gb", or "Please!!! Gimme the full capacity of the drive!":beer:
 
I would download any utilities you can get from WD to check these drives to make sure they are working properly. If they are not showing the correct size I would think you can get new drives under the 3 year warranty that most reputable hard drives carry. I think they have a disk called Data Lifeguard to partition and format WD drives - if their own software can't format these things then I guess nothing will!!! Good Luck!
 
I think the only firmware WD ever releases is to fix any possible problem with a specific drive.

But, if you can somehow get your hands on the original firmware for that model drive, you sould be able to flash the drive and fix the non accessible platers/heads. Of course, if the platers/heads were disabled in hardware and not in firmware, then you may end up with some dead drives, so test it out on one drive first.

WD sould have the firmware flashing software on thier website. Its just a matter of getting ahold of the firmware for the drives that may be a problem.
 
Shame on you for saying no firmware available..Here is a link get what you need.Also this firmware will identify the drive by sereal # and disk size so you can cross reference it.Maybe you do have mismarked drives.

http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp

Are these used drives ?
 
diehrd said:
Shame on you for saying no firmware available..Here is a link get what you need.Also this firmware will identify the drive by sereal # and disk size so you can cross reference it.Maybe you do have mismarked drives.

http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp
Eh?:eh?:

No firmware for hard drives there. Just the standard DataLifeline software. I can't even find the old firmware they had for the drive I have anymore.
 
This debug routine is used to erase all partition information on the hard disk drive and is only recommend for experienced users or users who are unable to delete the partition information through fdisk.

A:\>debug <enter>
-F 200 L1000 0 <enter>
-A CS:100 <enter>
xxxx:0100 MOV AX,301 <enter>
xxxx:0103 MOV BX,200 <enter>
xxxx:0106 MOV CX,1 <enter>
xxxx:0109 MOV DX,80 <enter>

(80 for hd 0 or 81 for hd 1 )

xxxx:010C INT 13 <enter>
xxxx:010E INT 20 <enter>
xxxx:0110 <enter>
-g <enter>
Program terminated normally
-q<enter>

Once this debug routine is complete reboot computer and all partitions should be erased. Before anything can be installed back onto the computer you must run Fdisk and recreate the partition as well as format the hard disk drive.
This may work for you... I dunno... Try it.
 
How to restore the capacity of a hard drive

I had a the same problem with a Maxtor MX6L040J2 drive. A 40GB hard drive that was defined by the BIOS as a 10GB drive. I found a HDD Capacity Restore Tool utility at http://www.hddguru.com that restored the drive to full factory capacity.
 
Get MHDD and remove the HPA:

To do this, when in MHDD, type: nhpa

99.9999999999 percent it's because of HPA being set.
 
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