Corrupted Drive Won't Display Full Capacity

[dudleydocker]

I had a WD 250 GB that experienced a data corruption problem. I was able to recover most of the data with a data recovery tool. I then tried to reformat the drive, first wih Windows and then with Partition Magic 8.0. Both failed to complete the format operation. I then ran the Western Digital tools against the drive, include the long data test. The drive passed this test. I then wrote zeroes to the drive (another WD utility) and attempted to reformat. The drive now shows up only as 131 GB approximately in PM 8.0 and with FDISK.

Am I running into a size limit of some kind? Or is there another issue?

Thanks.

 

[Markfw]

Is this drive still in the same system ? It sound like the old "136 gig" limitation stuff. What does the bios report ? What OS are you running ?

 

[dudleydocker]

Ooops, sorry I forgot the system specs. The drive is running on the Promise Ultra 100 PCI that came with it. It's still in the same system (data only) running XP Pro SP1. Asus A7N8X with the most recent BIOS. BIOS reports drive size.....gonna have to log off and check that....

Thanks.

 

[dudleydocker]

I confirmed that I am running the most recent BIOS. Since the drive in question is running through the PCI card, do the settings in the BIOS (Nbr of cylinders, etc) really matter?

Again, this drive worked fine before the data corruption issue. I didn't change anything else.

Thanks.

 

[Fuchs]

so the size shows up in the BIOS? It should show up I imagine in the BIOS of the PCI card you have. You may have to hit a key combo to get into the bios on the PCI card, kinda like a raid card.

It sounds like the computer doesnt see the whole size.

 

[dudleydocker]

OK, how the heck do I get into the BIOS for the Promise PCI card? What key(s) do I hit when the card info flashes? The card came with the HD and I didn't get any documentation with it.

Thnx.

 

[Markfw]

Why are you running a separate PCI controller card ? That motherboard has its own controller. Maybe thats part of the problem. Put the drive on the A7N8X, and see what it says during the boot as far as the drive size.