Western Digital 500gb problem

[KMAcoose]

I own both an Asus A8V and a Gigabyte GA-K8VT800 motherboard based
computers using the VIA VT8237 southbridge. It's suppose to support
large drives. Unfortunately both computers' BIOSes will only recognize
my WD 500Gb as a 137Gb drive. I had the same problem with a large
Maxtor hard drive (400gb I believe). My current Western Digital was a
replacement for the Maxtor, which I thought was the original problem.

On the Asus board I'm using a WD 240Gb drive, and on the Gigabyte I'm
using a Maxtor 200Gb drive. No problems with either as the boot
drives. But why would these computers' BIOSes be reporting the larger
500Gb drive as 137Gb? Both computers have Windows XP with SP2
installed.

Any help is appreciated.

 

[Yes Baby]

I own both an Asus A8V and a Gigabyte GA-K8VT800 motherboard based
computers using the VIA VT8237 southbridge. It's suppose to support
large drives. Unfortunately both computers' BIOSes will only recognize
my WD 500Gb as a 137Gb drive. I had the same problem with a large
Maxtor hard drive (400gb I believe). My current Western Digital was a
replacement for the Maxtor, which I thought was the original problem.

On the Asus board I'm using a WD 240Gb drive, and on the Gigabyte I'm
using a Maxtor 200Gb drive. No problems with either as the boot
drives. But why would these computers' BIOSes be reporting the larger
500Gb drive as 137Gb? Both computers have Windows XP with SP2
installed.

Any help is appreciated.

are you up to date on BIOS updates,

 

[KMAcoose]

Both BIOSes are up to date. And looking through the update information
neither company provides updates specifically to address 48bit data
transfer or large hard drives. Could it be a problem with the ribbon
cables? I'm really quite stumped about why the 240 and 200 Gb drives
work, and the larger drives don't.

I remember using a zero write program from a linux disk, and only then
was I able to "see" the Maxtor's full 400Gb. Unfortunately I was a
klutz at using the program and couldn't figure out how to fix my
problem. Can't remember what it was called either.

 

[Yes Baby]

Both BIOSes are up to date. And looking through the update information
neither company provides updates specifically to address 48bit data
transfer or large hard drives. Could it be a problem with the ribbon
cables? I'm really quite stumped about why the 240 and 200 Gb drives
work, and the larger drives don't.

I remember using a zero write program from a linux disk, and only then
was I able to "see" the Maxtor's full 400Gb. Unfortunately I was a
klutz at using the program and couldn't figure out how to fix my
problem. Can't remember what it was called either.

yes I believe you need the 80 way ribbon cable.

 

[spodosaurus]

Both BIOSes are up to date. And looking through the update information
neither company provides updates specifically to address 48bit data
transfer or large hard drives. Could it be a problem with the ribbon
cables? I'm really quite stumped about why the 240 and 200 Gb drives
work, and the larger drives don't.

I remember using a zero write program from a linux disk,

What version of windows are you using, and is it fully up to date with
service packs and motherboard drivers?

and only then
was I able to "see" the Maxtor's full 400Gb. Unfortunately I was a
klutz at using the program and couldn't figure out how to fix my
problem. Can't remember what it was called either.

--
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[KMAcoose]

Yes, everything is up to date, BIOS, Drivers, and WinXP SP2 (Home and
Professional). I'm a stickler that way.

As I also noted before, my 200Gb and 240Gb work, but not the 400+
Gigabyte drives. Oddly, a hard drive information program I used
reported that the 200Gb and 240Gb drives didn't support 48bit data
transfer. I thought all hard drives over 137Gb required 48bit support?

 

[Franc Zabkar]

Yes, everything is up to date, BIOS, Drivers, and WinXP SP2 (Home and
Professional). I'm a stickler that way.

As I also noted before, my 200Gb and 240Gb work, but not the 400+
Gigabyte drives. Oddly, a hard drive information program I used
reported that the 200Gb and 240Gb drives didn't support 48bit data
transfer. I thought all hard drives over 137Gb required 48bit support?

If the BIOS is 48bit LBA compliant, then one possible reason for the
capacity limitation is that the drive has been configured to report
only that amount of sectors consistent with 28bit LBA. For example, I
believe some vendors (eg Compaq?) used to ship warranty replacement
20GB drives in place of 10GB drives, but crippled them to report only
10GB, ie the original capacity that the customer paid for.
Alternatively your drives may be jumpered to report a reduced capacity
for compatibility reasons.

What I would do is to query each drive at the lowest level using the
ATA Identify Drive command. This retrieves 256 words (512 bytes) of
information from the drive, including its "Maximum user LBA for 48-bit
addressing".

Here is a brief explanation:
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Large-Disk-HOWTO-10.html

I use a very old Seagate utility called Find-ATA. It needs to run in
real DOS mode (not a Windows DOS box). I'd run it from a bootable,
write enabled DOS floppy diskette.

If your drive is configured as a primary slave, then the command to
use is ...

find-ata p s d

Find-ATA should then create a 512 byte file named drive1.ATA. You can
use the DOS Debug command to analyse this file (I believe Debug is
also available in a WinXP cmd window).

Type the following ...

debug drive1.ATA
-d 100 2ff
-q

The drive's capacity should be located at bytes 1C8 - 1CF.

Here are Find-ATA.exe and the results of my own experimentation with
smaller drives:
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/IDE-identify/

- Franc Zabkar

 

[KMAcoose]

My problem got solved. I ended up downloading GParted (LiveCD). The
Livecd is an iso image that creates a bootable linux cd. GParted is a
partitioning tool. When I booted with the CD, magically, GParted saw
the whole 500Gb.

I suspect my problem was related to what Franc Zabkar had indicated.
Somehow the disk was locked to report a specific size, even though I'd
thought I had zeroed the MBR. Imediately after repartitioning in
GParted, the BIOS then recognized the WD hard drive as a 500Gb drive.
Whew!

Goofy WindowsXP, after an initial reboot, identified the drive as a
one terrabyte drive. But subsequently Identified the drive as it
should've been, 500Gb. Thanks Franc, and the guys at GParted.

 

[Franc Zabkar]

My problem got solved. I ended up downloading GParted (LiveCD). The
Livecd is an iso image that creates a bootable linux cd. GParted is a
partitioning tool. When I booted with the CD, magically, GParted saw
the whole 500Gb.

I suspect my problem was related to what Franc Zabkar had indicated.
Somehow the disk was locked to report a specific size, even though I'd
thought I had zeroed the MBR. Imediately after repartitioning in
GParted, the BIOS then recognized the WD hard drive as a 500Gb drive.
Whew!

Goofy WindowsXP, after an initial reboot, identified the drive as a
one terrabyte drive. But subsequently Identified the drive as it
should've been, 500Gb. Thanks Franc, and the guys at GParted.

Sorry, but I doubt that my input was of any use.

This is what prompted my original suggestion:

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

====================================================================
Operating systems use the IDENTIFY DEVICE command to find out the
addressable space of a hard drive. The IDENTIFY DEVICE command queries
a particular register on the IDE controller to establish the size of a
drive.

This register however can be changed using the SET MAX ADDRESS ATA
command. If the value in the register is set to less than the actual
hard drive size then effectively a Host Protected Area is created. It
is protected because the OS will only work with the value in the
register that is returned by the IDENTIFY DEVICE command and thus will
never be able to address the parts of the drive that lie within the
HPA.
====================================================================

GParted appears to be confined to the visible areas of the HD. I don't
see any reference in its documentation that would suggest that it is
HPA aware.

- Franc Zabkar