- Joined
- Dec 20, 2000
- Location
- Albany, NY
As a means of assisting everyone in figuring out if a drive is on the verge of quitting, I have compiled a list of links to the major manufacturers diagnostic software;
Seagate Seatools
Western Digital Data Lifeguard
Fujitsu fjdt_6 for IDE and sdiag_14 for SCSI
IBM and Hitachi Drive Fitness Test and other utilities
Maxtor and Quantum
Powermax
Samsung SHDiag.
If I missed any manufacturers, please let me know.
A commercial product for HD diagnostics and protection is Spinrite 5.0 . Having not used it, read up and see if you think it is worth your time and dollars.
A new shareware product with a free demo DL, that purports to repair bad sectors, isHDD Regenerator . Haven't tried it but have heard good things about it.
Here's another new site just pointed out to me;
Hiren. Seems to have a lot of interesting stuff.
(The following added by David)
Recently a lot of people have been asking why their drive does not appear to have as much space as it was advertised as having. This can often mean drives are showing up a few gigabytes smaller than advertised. There are two possible reasons for this.
1) Manufacturers say "Gigabyte" when they mean 1,000,000,000 (10^9) bytes. When your operating system says "Gigabytes" it means 1,073,741,824 (2^30) bytes. This means in your OS the drive appears smaller.
For example, Samsung 120GB hard drive = 120,000,000,000 bytes.
120,000,000,000 bytes = 111.76 Gigabytes, 8GB less than advertised.
2) Windows XP, without Service Pack 1 or a suitable modification, will not see more than 137GB on one drive. If your drive is more than 137GB in size and is showing as 137GB then this is probably your problem. This is a limitation in Windows XP that is fixed in service pack 1.
To fix this problem:
See this article
From the linked article:
And if you dont want to install SP1:
Note: If you have installed Windows XP which has only seen a 137GB drive, created a 137GB partition and installed windows in that partition, you will need to create a new partition to use the newly available space.
For example, you have a 200GB drive. You created a 137GB partition and installed WindowsXP on it. You apply the fix/install SP1. To use the extra space you now have made available, go to Control Panel -> Admin Tools -> Computer Management -> Storage -> Disk Management section, and create a partition in the space now available.
Seagate Seatools
Western Digital Data Lifeguard
Fujitsu fjdt_6 for IDE and sdiag_14 for SCSI
IBM and Hitachi Drive Fitness Test and other utilities
Maxtor and Quantum
Powermax
Samsung SHDiag.
If I missed any manufacturers, please let me know.
A commercial product for HD diagnostics and protection is Spinrite 5.0 . Having not used it, read up and see if you think it is worth your time and dollars.
A new shareware product with a free demo DL, that purports to repair bad sectors, isHDD Regenerator . Haven't tried it but have heard good things about it.
Here's another new site just pointed out to me;
Hiren. Seems to have a lot of interesting stuff.
(The following added by David)
Recently a lot of people have been asking why their drive does not appear to have as much space as it was advertised as having. This can often mean drives are showing up a few gigabytes smaller than advertised. There are two possible reasons for this.
1) Manufacturers say "Gigabyte" when they mean 1,000,000,000 (10^9) bytes. When your operating system says "Gigabytes" it means 1,073,741,824 (2^30) bytes. This means in your OS the drive appears smaller.
For example, Samsung 120GB hard drive = 120,000,000,000 bytes.
120,000,000,000 bytes = 111.76 Gigabytes, 8GB less than advertised.
2) Windows XP, without Service Pack 1 or a suitable modification, will not see more than 137GB on one drive. If your drive is more than 137GB in size and is showing as 137GB then this is probably your problem. This is a limitation in Windows XP that is fixed in service pack 1.
To fix this problem:
See this article
From the linked article:
Windows XP SP1 includes 48-bit LBA support for ATAPI disk drives. With this support, you can use hard disks that are larger than the current 137 GB limit. By default, support is enabled in SP1. To determine if you are running SP1, right-click My Computer and then click Properties. On the General tab, Service Pack 1 will be listed under "System."
And if you dont want to install SP1:
redduc900 said:You'll need to enable "Large Drive Support" by editing the Registry. Expand the following branch...
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE | SYSTEM | CurrentControlSet | Services | atapi | Parameters
In the RH pane, you'll need to add a new DWORD called...
EnableBigLba...with a DWORD Value of 1
Note: If you have installed Windows XP which has only seen a 137GB drive, created a 137GB partition and installed windows in that partition, you will need to create a new partition to use the newly available space.
For example, you have a 200GB drive. You created a 137GB partition and installed WindowsXP on it. You apply the fix/install SP1. To use the extra space you now have made available, go to Control Panel -> Admin Tools -> Computer Management -> Storage -> Disk Management section, and create a partition in the space now available.
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