Size of HDD decreased for unknown reason

[Ulrich Schmidt]

Dear NG,

when I got back a harddisk from my son, BIOS shows only an available
size of little bit more than 8400MB. Originally the disk was 120GB. I
ran an LLF from Samsung (its a Samsung device) against this disk and
this utility recognized the full size and did a low-level-format for
hours without any error against it.
But back to BIOS-setup it still recognized the above mentioned size.
The BIOS is PhoenixBIOS 4.06.
Any suggestions are appreciated. I've no idea.

Ulrich

 

[Rod Speed]

Dear NG,

This is the cheap NG.

when I got back a harddisk from my son, BIOS shows only an available
size of little bit more than 8400MB. Originally the disk was 120GB. I
ran an LLF from Samsung (its a Samsung device) against this disk and
this utility recognized the full size and did a low-level-format for
hours without any error against it.
But back to BIOS-setup it still recognized the above mentioned size.
The BIOS is PhoenixBIOS 4.06.

Any suggestions are appreciated. I've no idea.

Check what you have for the drive type setting in the bios.

It should be AUTO or AUTO AUTO with an old system.
Likely he's managed to put fixed CHS values in there instead.
Modern drives will pretend to be the size that the CHS values specify.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Dear NG,

when I got back a harddisk from my son, BIOS shows only an available
size of little bit more than 8400MB.

Which is ~8GB, the CHS limit.

Originally the disk was 120GB.

And it still is.

I ran an LLF from Samsung (its a Samsung device) against this disk and
this utility recognized the full size and did a low-level-format for
hours without any error against it.
But back to BIOS-setup it still recognized the above mentioned size.

The BIOS is PhoenixBIOS 4.06.

Which is how old?

 

[Ulrich Schmidt]

Rod Speed wrote:
Folkert Rienstra wrote:

Thanks for your help. Sorry that I didn't respond in time. I hat waited
for an update of this item and lost hope last.
I could repair it without understanding what really happened.
I did a ll-format again. After this the BIOS still showed it as a small
device. Then I installed W2K - after this it was ok.

bye,
Ulrich