Simviation Forum - Big problem with a hard drive!

Feb 4^th, 2012 at 12:37pm

michaelb15 Offline
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I just got around to installing the 250GB drive I bought a few days ago, and there seems to be a little issue with it.

It is a western digital drive it shows up in the device manager as WDC WD2500JB-00RE0

Now when I go onto it, it is short a couple hundred gb.

To be exact, it shows that it is only 31.4 GB.

I tried to reformat it, because I thought that maybe it was in FAT32 format, but that didn't help ether. It is still saying it is only 31.4gb. (It is formatted as NTFS)

Has anyone ever encountered a problem like this before? Because I have never heard of anything like this Roll Eyes

I hope there is a simple fix. Maybe I overlooked somthing simple when I installed it maybe?

Thanks for looking!

I am somwhere I don't know where I am!!!&&

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Reply #1 - Feb 4^th, 2012 at 11:06pm

expat Offline
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Have you gone into your BIOS and told the computer how big the drive is??

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Reply #2 - Feb 5^th, 2012 at 7:59am

RaptorF22 Offline
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You could try looking in the disk management section of computer management and make sure that there is no unallocated space.

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Reply #3 - Feb 5^th, 2012 at 10:05am

Groundbound1 Offline
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Have a look at the drive's jumpers. Many older computers have a hard time dealing with large capactiy drives. As a result, some drive manufacturers put a jumper setting on their drives that will allow that drive to run with reduced capacity. (Usually right around 30GB or so.) Kinda sounds like that's what might be going on here.

Good luck.

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Reply #4 - Feb 5^th, 2012 at 6:39pm

michaelb15 Offline
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THankyou for all the tips.

This hard drive does not have a jumper like the one you describe.

And the BIOS said the drive was 0mb... I thought that was strange.

Before I went into the disk management part, I used a program (HDD wipe) to fully wipe it clean. Then the program told me to partition it, and format it.

But after wiping it, the computer DOESNT EVEN RECOGNISE IT!?!?!?!

I have no idea what to do now.

Does anyone here know? Because I am about to just bring the drive back, and get my money back...

And maybe invest in a 2 terabyte SATA.

I am somwhere I don't know where I am!!!&&

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Reply #5 - Feb 6^th, 2012 at 10:42am

dave3cu Offline
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I'm no expert but this is the path I'd follow if you haven't already found a solution...

Have you tried the WD Support?. Go here for support for your EIDE HD-http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=502&lang=en

Goto the installation guide for the proper jumper settings for your hd cable configuration. (single, master/slave, cable select)

Goto the download section for the Data Lifeguard Diagnostics tools available. Look at the description/instructions of each. As your Windows doesn't see the drive you may have to use one of the bootable DOS options.

Good luck..

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Reply #6 - Feb 6^th, 2012 at 12:50pm

michaelb15 Offline
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dave3cu wrote on Feb 6^th, 2012 at 10:42am:

I'm no expert but this is the path I'd follow if you haven't already found a solution...

Have you tried the WD Support?. Go here for support for your EIDE HD-http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=502&lang=en

Goto the installation guide for the proper jumper settings for your hd cable configuration. (single, master/slave, cable select)

Goto the download section for the Data Lifeguard Diagnostics tools available. Look at the description/instructions of each. As your Windows doesn't see the drive you may have to use one of the bootable DOS options.

Good luck..

THankyou for the tip, but I took it back already. Lucky for me, there is a 500gb SATA drive, and with a bit of luck, that will suit my purposes!

I am somwhere I don't know where I am!!!&&

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Reply #7 - Feb 7^th, 2012 at 9:56am

alrot Offline
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I assume you must know this but just in case

You need to eliminate(kill) all partitions, Use the Windows Xp second edition OR Win98 as a boot to check the drive and how many "Unknown" partitions are not included,(Some Linus OS cause this)
Once you eliminate all partitions THEn its when you will format the entire HDD

I have 1Tb and 2 500mb in a single PC ,all Samsung, I rather Samsung HDDS ,I have seen several Caviar WD died in a couple weeks and some others WD too all above 250 gb ,it seems the quality has lower down what used to be the best HDD in the market

Venezuela

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Reply #8 - May 29^th, 2012 at 4:58am

richardd43 Offline
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If you run into the problem again you can use Diskpart (which is already installed) to reformat the drive.

Run diskpart.exe

1 list disk

2 select disk x with x being the number given for your ssd/hdd

3 clean (this destroys all partition/volume data on the disk)

4 create partition primary align=1024

5 active

6 format fs=ntfs quick

7 exit

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