Here is an interesting post describing a BIOS bug. It causes 1TB
drives to be incorrectly downsized after the BIOS grabs some 2000
sectors at the top end and hides them in a HPA for the purpose of
"auto recovering a damaged BIOS to its original state".

http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/....id=1706#M1706

Here is one instance of the problem:

http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/...d=15702#M15702

Here is a Gigabyte blurb:

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Support/M...x?NewTechID=84

"Xpress Bios Rescue – Auto recovers damaged BIOS to its original
state! BIOS Image is stored in your HDD hidden area automatically when
system boots up."

This article explains the HPA:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Host_protected_area

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

On 13 Oct 2009 03:31:09 GMT, Arno <(E-Mail Removed)> put finger to
keyboard and composed:

>Franc Zabkar <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>> Here is an interesting post describing a BIOS bug. It causes 1TB
>> drives to be incorrectly downsized after the BIOS grabs some 2000
>> sectors at the top end and hides them in a HPA for the purpose of
>> "auto recovering a damaged BIOS to its original state".
>
>> http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/....id=1706#M1706
>
>> Here is one instance of the problem:
>
>> http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/...d=15702#M15702
>
>> Here is a Gigabyte blurb:
>
>> http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Support/M...x?NewTechID=84
>
>> "Xpress Bios Rescue ? Auto recovers damaged BIOS to its original
>> state! BIOS Image is stored in your HDD hidden area automatically when
>> system boots up."
>
>> This article explains the HPA:
>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Host_protected_area
>
>I have a board that supposedly does this. I did not dare
>to try it. Seems that was a good idea...

Here's another case where a 1.5TB HD was truncated to 500GB:

http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/...ssage.id=15736

It appears that the buggy BIOS wraps the LBA count after 31 bits.

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.