Double hdd capacity...I like it!

[DocClock aka MadClocker]

I found an article that explains how to find and use hidden partitions on a hdd.
You use Ghost 2003 Build 2003.775. (without updates or patches) supposedly you can get 500gb from a 200gb drive. The list below shows the potential.

Supposed Results:

Western Digital 200GB SATA
Yield after recovery: 510GB of space

IBM Deskstar 80GB EIDE
Yield after recovery: 150GB of space

Maxtor 40GB EIDE
Yield after recovery: 80GB

Seagate 20GB EIDE
Yield after recovery: 30GB

Unknown laptop 80GB HDD
Yield: 120GB

I know I'm not supposed to post links to other sites, so anyone is interested You can PM me for the link, or google "unlock hidden partitions" to find the article...funny, I'm at the point of either adding another drive, or upgrading, as I'm almost out of space on my 100g OS drive.
I have a few drives lying around...now if I can just get the right ghost prog to use, I will give it a shot. If I can increase my capacity for free, then I will do it in a heartbeat.
Whaddya think?

 

[Dusnoetos]

I would like to see some verified results of this - With stability tests.
And how does this work?

 

[CompuTamer]

I would like to see some verified results of this - With stability tests.
And how does this work?

Sounds like it uses the recovery sectors... for when the hard drive detects a bad sector and replaces it.

I don't see how it could recover that much space though. Maybe a gig at most would be my guess...

 

[Mpegger]

Sounds like its bypassing the HDD bios and accessing space that was disabled/not meant to be used for whatever reason.

For instance, a HDD manufacturer could design a single 500GB HDD that uses 2 platters. By simply altering the HDD bios, they could disable access to a platter which would obviously, reduce the size of the HDD by half.

Why? Because it's cheaper to build a production line to produce 1 product, and simply alter the bios to configure the end product as they please.

Low cost model? Disable a platter, reduce accessible cache, and reduce the rotation speed all in bios.

Premium model? Allow access to all cache, spindle speed at its highest, and full access to both platters.

Both are physically the same exact model, but because of the alterations in the HDD bios, they appear and work differently.

I dunno if this is something that would work on more recent drives though. I think the days of 1 production line, bios alteration are nearly extinct because of the way "creative" folk can find the goodies and alter hardware to have full access and full functionality of the higher priced item. Just imagine how fast people would buy up a $30 250GB HDD, if it was as easy as running a program to turn it into the premium $120 1TB speed demon model.

 

[bmwbaxter]

well even still if it doesn't work on new drives, you can still buy up older drives for cheap then do it to them. in a home server setting where super speed isn't a priority and a setup of raid 0+1 for speed and data safety

 

[ratbuddy]

Reminds me of formatting MFM drives to RLL to get free (unstable) space.

 

[DocClock aka MadClocker]

The writer of the article was "unwilling" to try it out on his own computer, but I would venture that what Mpegger said is probably true. It's cheaper to ramp up 1 production line and "re-configure" them after manufacture.
I remember the PII450 being remarked as a PII300 because the demand for the 300 was so high that they ran out of them, and they "underclocked" the PII450 by running it on a 66mhx bus instead of the 100mhz bus it was made for...which btw, is where most people 1st heard of overclocking. I believe the chip was the SL3WM? not sure as that was way back in the 20th century

 

[bchur83]

I remember trying this a while back, it was found that it is duplicating sectors and will cause data corruption after a while. I wouldnt trust it with any important data.

 

[DocClock aka MadClocker]

I pulled this from the original article...it shows the partition to be hidden, and not duplicated. here is the excerpt:
** UPDATE II A representative for large hard drive distributor Bell Micro said: "This is NOT undocumented and we have done this in the past to load an image of the original installation of the software. When the client corrupted the o/s we had a boot floppy that opened the unseen partition and copied it to the active or seen partition. It is a not a new feature or discovery. We use it ourselves without any qualms".
The last sentence is what seems to be important (to me anyway).
No I wouldn't try it with any of my OS drives, but I have many ide's lying around so I could try it, and then test it out to see if data corruption does occur or not.
Worth a try if it works and doesn't corrupt data over the long haul

 

[Mpegger]

I remember trying this a while back, it was found that it is duplicating sectors and will cause data corruption after a while. I wouldnt trust it with any important data.

That's another one I forgot about. People tampering with the HDD bios and forcing parameters onto it that may work for some time, but eventually cause failure of some sort (data corruption would be #1 I think).

 

[bmwbaxter]

a raid 1 or 0+1 setup would help to lower the risk of losing data.

 

[Mpegger]

RAID 1 protects against disk failure, not data corruption. And this would be somewhat of a bother to fully RAID these drives since they may have a non-standard size.

 

[David]

I remember trying this a while back, it was found that it is duplicating sectors and will cause data corruption after a while. I wouldnt trust it with any important data.

This.

I'm sure this was debunked to be basically a glitch that would corrupt your data.

To be honest, when you can get a 500 GB HDD for £40 I don't think it's worth the risk.

 

[DocClock aka MadClocker]

ya gotta admit though that it would be nice to have an extra few gigs for nothing..this article did not mention altering the bios of the hdd..it mentions swapping hdd's out and back again. If the mods don't mind, I will post a link to the article..but only if a mod posts here to say I can do it.
Hope all of you are healthy and doing well,
Doc

 

[ratbuddy]

Do people still use programs like Stacker?

 

[xoke]

I call shenanigans.

 

[DocClock aka MadClocker]

a raid 1 or 0+1 setup would help to lower the risk of losing data.

Sorry to be a stickler for details,but raid would not be applicable here as I'm only talking about expanding the capacity 1 disk...any form of raid would not work in this issue.
Maybe after you expand two or three identical drives, then raid would be possible or effective.

With today's hardware, raid is getting less relevant as time goes by, and it is mostly for people wanting data protection, or in the case of a stripe set, to gain a little speed. Capacity is no longer an issue except to get more or continued use from old drives
In my case, I would choose raid striping to get more hdd capacity from all the drives I have on hand...Windows Home Server could be the driving force to get more capacity from your old drives. I think I have 4 or 5 30g maxtors lying around doing nothing, so raid with old drives would be a benefit for the server.
So I ask, which would you prefer.. a single SSD or 4 7200.10's equaling the same capacity?
My choice would have to be the SSD, although at this time, it would probably be cheaper to get the 4 mechanical drives and wait for the SSD's to come down in price.
I hope I cleared up the reason why raid would not help in this instance.
To ALL, Take care and stay WELL,
Doc