Re: WD2500BEVE corrupted geometry

Previously Peter Lu <swift@theworld.com> wrote:
> I bought a WD2500BEVE drive (Western Digital 250GB 2.5"
> IDE) to upgrade my Dell laptop and somehow in the process
> of partitioning, formatting and Windows OS migration, its
> geometry got corrupted and instead of being a 250GB drive,
> it is now a 78GB drive. The corruption is on the drive
> itself, as the 78GB shows in PC BIOS, with Knoppix Linux,
> when the drive is put in a USB enclosure, and in WD's
> Data Lifeguard Diagnostics. Other people have
> successfully installed this drive on the model of my
> laptop, so IDE controller features such as 48-bit
> addressing should not be any issue.

> WD DLG Diagnostics shows the CHS as 152139/16/63 when the
> drive should be about 484402/16/63. I contacted WD
> support and the rep says it can't be fixed via software
> and must be RMA'ed. The WD DLG tools don't have any
> abilities to change/correct the CHS configuration.

> Does anyone know of any utilities that could do some
> low-level geometry fixing on these WD drives? Can
> anyone explain how a 250GB drive could have been
> corrupted into a 78GB drive via software and not be
> able to be reverted via software? I saw somewhere
> that these drives have many layers of fancy geometry
> translations and it's likely the same hardware
> could be programmed to be different devices (drive
> sizes, features, etc.), which would make sense that
> WD does not release the software to do hardware
> "configuration."

> My drive will get replaced, so hopefully the
> corruption won't occur again. Perhaps the drive I
> have is indeed defective or arrears on firmware.
> But my curiosity is aroused, and I'd really like
> to understand what's under the covers.

> Thanks for any help.

It is likely not corruption. Some manufacturers (all?)
include the possibility to down-configure drive capacities.
This is done for business reasons, e.g. when manufacturing
a separate 40GB drive configuration is more expensive
than manufacuring all 80GB and just selling some a 40GB
and others as 80GB. The reason is that even selling the
same drive at a lower price can still turn a profit
and gets the customer to buy your product, instead the
cheaper 40GB drive form somebody else. Just dropping the
price of the 80GB model down to the one of the 40GB
model is also not an option, since then you decrease
the profit on the 80GB model by too much.

One of the ugly sides of capitalism, that sometimes
degrading the quality of a product at additional
cost (implementing the limiter-feature costs money....)
makes business sense.

Of course the drive manufacturers doe emphatically not
want people to be able to reverse the limiting process.

One question: Are you sure this drive came to you with
full capacity? You should not be able to modify
the limit yourself, unless it is very shoddily
implemented, which would be a reason to stay away from WD.
After all if repartitioning can cause you to need
professional data recovery, the product clearly is a
health hazard...

Arno

Arno Wagner wrote in news:65emnqF2f3o5dU2@mid.individual.net
> Previously Peter Lu <swift@theworld.com> wrote:
> > I bought a WD2500BEVE drive (Western Digital 250GB 2.5"
> > IDE) to upgrade my Dell laptop and somehow in the process
> > of partitioning, formatting and Windows OS migration, its
> > geometry got corrupted and instead of being a 250GB drive,
> > it is now a 78GB drive. The corruption is on the drive
> > itself, as the 78GB shows in PC BIOS, with Knoppix Linux,
> > when the drive is put in a USB enclosure, and in WD's
> > Data Lifeguard Diagnostics. Other people have
> > successfully installed this drive on the model of my
> > laptop, so IDE controller features such as 48-bit
> > addressing should not be any issue.
>
> > WD DLG Diagnostics shows the CHS as 152139/16/63 when the
> > drive should be about 484402/16/63. I contacted WD
> > support and the rep says it can't be fixed via software
> > and must be RMA'ed. The WD DLG tools don't have any
> > abilities to change/correct the CHS configuration.
>
> > Does anyone know of any utilities that could do some
> > low-level geometry fixing on these WD drives? Can
> > anyone explain how a 250GB drive could have been
> > corrupted into a 78GB drive via software and not be
> > able to be reverted via software? I saw somewhere
> > that these drives have many layers of fancy geometry
> > translations and it's likely the same hardware
> > could be programmed to be different devices (drive
> > sizes, features, etc.), which would make sense that
> > WD does not release the software to do hardware
> > "configuration."
>
> > My drive will get replaced, so hopefully the
> > corruption won't occur again. Perhaps the drive I
> > have is indeed defective or arrears on firmware.
> > But my curiosity is aroused, and I'd really like
> > to understand what's under the covers.
>
> > Thanks for any help.
>
> It is likely not corruption. Some manufacturers (all?)
> include the possibility to down-configure drive capacities.
> This is done for business reasons, e.g. when manufacturing
> a separate 40GB drive configuration is more expensive
> than manufacuring all 80GB and just selling some a 40GB
> and others as 80GB. The reason is that even selling the
> same drive at a lower price can still turn a profit
> and gets the customer to buy your product, instead the
> cheaper 40GB drive form somebody else. Just dropping the
> price of the 80GB model down to the one of the 40GB
> model is also not an option, since then you decrease
> the profit on the 80GB model by too much.
>
> One of the ugly sides of capitalism, that sometimes
> degrading the quality of a product at additional
> cost (implementing the limiter-feature costs money....)
> makes business sense.

> Of course the drive manufacturers doe emphatically not
> want people to be able to reverse the limiting process.

Hence showing your utter nonsense above.

>
> One question: Are you sure this drive came to you with
> full capacity? You should not be able to modify
> the limit yourself, unless it is very shoddily
> implemented, which would be a reason to stay away from WD.
> After all if repartitioning can cause you to need
> professional data recovery, the product clearly is a
> health hazard...

More bullshit.

>
> Arno

Peter Lu wrote in news:ft0684$cf3$1@pcls6.std.com
> In article <65emnqF2f3o5dU2@mid.individual.net>,
> Arno Wagner <me@privacy.net> wrote:
>
> > It is likely not corruption. Some manufacturers (all?)
> > include the possibility to down-configure drive capacities.
> > This is done for business reasons, e.g. when manufacturing
> > a separate 40GB drive configuration is more expensive
> > than manufacuring all 80GB and just selling some a 40GB
> > and others as 80GB. The reason is that even selling the
> > same drive at a lower price can still turn a profit
> > and gets the customer to buy your product, instead the
> > cheaper 40GB drive form somebody else. Just dropping the
> > price of the 80GB model down to the one of the 40GB
> > model is also not an option, since then you decrease
> > the profit on the 80GB model by too much.
>
> Yes, I realize this happens. With configurable mapping,
> it's also possible that they qualify a given drive to
> be a certain size depending on how much media defect it has.

Nope. Any drive has extra capacity set aside for media defects.
Any drive has to conform to the specs set for it in the manual
and model specification. You can't just change that at will.

> They do this grading for CPU and memory (speed) as well.

But it is not changeable, as setMAXLBA was designed to be.

>
> > One of the ugly sides of capitalism, that sometimes
> > degrading the quality of a product at additional
> > cost (implementing the limiter-feature costs money....)
> > makes business sense.
> >
> > Of course the drive manufacturers doe emphatically not
> > want people to be able to reverse the limiting process.
>
> Yup.
>
> > One question: Are you sure this drive came to you with
> > full capacity? You should not be able to modify
> > the limit yourself, unless it is very shoddily
> > implemented, which would be a reason to stay away from WD.
> > After all if repartitioning can cause you to need
> > professional data recovery, the product clearly is a
> > health hazard...

> The drive was 250GB when I got it. It's getting
> short-stroked extremely easily, via some Windows
> boot-up software I believe. I totally agree with
> your assessment of its being a health hazard.

Any drive has that ability. It's a standard.

>
> Perhaps the replacement drive would have newer
> firmware that's more robust.

Not really. It can be done because it is by standard.

> Perhaps the WD rep knows about this short-stroking vulnerability

It's not a vulnerability, it's a feature. Any drive will adhere to it.

> (via some internal product advisory), and hence
> agreed to the RMA without much hassle.
>
> Thanks.