HD problem - Lost capacity

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HD problem - Lost capacity

Postby liqnit » Wed Jun 06, 2007 7:34 am

Hi
I have WD 200GB hard drive , and it was working great until today.
I was running PowerQuest DriveImage and when it loaded it reported a problem with the drive MBR and i selected to fix the problem.
Since then my HD is identified as 137GB and all my data is unaccessible.
I tried the WD tools and they also reported this is a 137GB Drive.

Any idea?

i used some MBR tools to erase the MBR and reset it but nothing help.
The problem is persisten in 2 computers in windows and in the BIOS

I have checked other 200GB drive and they are identified correct.
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Postby bubba » Wed Jun 06, 2007 9:21 am

I hope I'm wrong, but is sounds like the drive partition got re-allocated or resized. If thats the case then your stuff is most likely gone.

If the data was really important, you might try a data recovery program, search the forum there have been many threads on different programs to use.
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Postby dicecca112 » Wed Jun 06, 2007 10:41 am

is sp2 installed?
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Postby kenc51 » Wed Jun 06, 2007 11:44 am

You don't have an old copy of "Partition Magic"?? If you have, you can "undo" the changes to the partition.

As a LAST resort, you can boot from the XP CD and enter the "Recovery Console" and run the command "fixmbr" --> this will rewrite the boot record back to the default, but as Dicecca has noted, the CD must have SP2 integrated otherwise the OS will only see the first 137GB.
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Postby liqnit » Thu Jun 07, 2007 8:03 am

Thanks for all the answers.
I have tried Active@ Partition Recovery http://www.partition-recovery.com/
but with no luck .
my problem is not inside windows it is that Drive is now identified as 137Gb instead of 200GB

IT IS identified like that in the BIOS.
I tried erasing the MBR.

I have lost hope regarding the DATA
I just want the full drive space.


Any options?

i tried PartitionMagic .
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Re: HD problem - Lost capacity

Postby Drizzt81 » Mon Jul 23, 2007 12:04 pm

I have seen a tool that is able to resize the HDD on the firmware level, but I am not sure which one it was. I know that it was one of the HDD manufacturer's tools, like Seatools, WD Drive Diagnostics or PowMax.
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Re: HD problem - Lost capacity

Postby DMB2000uk » Mon Jul 23, 2007 3:20 pm

Does doing a complete reinstall and format of the drive still report it as a 137GB?

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Re: HD problem - Lost capacity

Postby liqnit » Tue Jul 24, 2007 12:55 am

Drizzt81 wrote:I have seen a tool that is able to resize the HDD on the firmware level, but I am not sure which one it was. I know that it was one of the HDD manufacturer's tools, like Seatools, WD Drive Diagnostics or PowMax.


I tried WD tools , couldnt find on with firmware level.
even a low level format didnt help.

Does doing a complete reinstall and format of the drive still report it as a 137GB?

Dan


i installed win XP on it and still it only shows 137GB
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Re: HD problem - Lost capacity

Postby T-Shirt » Tue Jul 24, 2007 8:28 am

Somehow, something has messed up the LBA48 (large block addressing) on your system.
If you reinstalled XP, including SP2 the OS should be able to handle it.
and you turned on LBA in the BIOS, then it should work.
If not, Atola Technology has a free tool for fixing the drive (but like a format you may lose the contents)

http://blog.atola.com/restoring-factory ... -capacity/
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Re: HD problem - Lost capacity

Postby liqnit » Tue Jul 24, 2007 10:52 pm

T-Shirt wrote:Somehow, something has messed up the LBA48 (large block addressing) on your system.
If you reinstalled XP, including SP2 the OS should be able to handle it.
and you turned on LBA in the BIOS, then it should work.
If not, Atola Technology has a free tool for fixing the drive (but like a format you may lose the contents)

http://blog.atola.com/restoring-factory ... -capacity/


Thanks a lot , I never heard of them before , i will give a try and report results , wish me luck
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