HDD problems

[MatK99]

Hi folks,

have a bit of a problem with one of my drives so I hope someone here will be able to help me.

Here's the thing:

I have 4 drives in my PC as my main drives.
I bought a new 1TB drive and enclosure to use as a backup drive. I have a Gigabyte P35-DS3P mobo and I use Thermaltake Max 4 enclosure. I have the drive connected with eSATA. Everything went ok, all good. I get 935GB of space, and drive works great. So few days ago, I backed up some stuff on this drive and today I started to rebuild my OS on one of my main 4 drives. I got XP Pro up and running, I connected the 1TB external drive, XP found it and I moved a bit of stuff of it. Then I wen to Windows Update and started to update XP. First (and only) update was SP3. After it installed it, it rebooted (have to note here, my 1TB was ON when I rebooted).
After the sistem got up, problems with 1TB drive started. First of all XP doesn't find it, I have to use Find New Hardware wizard. Then it does find it BUT, I get only a letter (used to have a full label) AND it shows it as 32MB drive and when I click on it, it says drive is not formated and wants it to format.
I connected the drive to my laptop, same thing. 32MB, not formatted.

So I installed TestDisk, ran it (took almost an hour), and got status:

Boot sector
Status: OK

Backup boot sector
ntfs_boot_sector: Can't read backup boot sector
Status: BAD

Sectors are not identical.

I then tried the "ORG BS" option (Copy boot sector over backup sector)
and get the error:
Write error: Can't overwrite NTFS backup boot sector.

I did notice before, it warned that correct drive size must be reported or recovery wont work. So no wonder it doesn't work.

So now I'm lost. What can I do? I have important stuff on the drive and REALLY don't want to re-format it. Why 32MB size, what happened?

Pls help!

TIA,
Mat


Update #1:
I played around with TestDisk a bit, got following status:
The harddisk (33MB) seems too small!! << 1000 GB / 931 GiB >>
Check the harddisk size: HD jumpers settings, BIOS detection...
Hint: update Windows to support LBA48 (minimum: W2K SP4 or XP SP1)
The following partitions can't be recovered
HPFS - NTFS ........

So I'm guessing, partition is there, but it's somehow hidden. (BTW: one other status from TestDrive said: "no boot partition present")
I didn't change jumpers/bios during XP SP1 - SP3 upgrade, so the drive should work as it did before, but it doesn't.

 

[taltamir]

take it OUT of the enclosure, and put it inside the PC using a regular SATA connection. This might solve the problem enough to access the data...
PS. it is not a BACKUP if you have data there that is not found anywhere else!

 

[VirtualLarry]

Sounds like the firmware 32GB software capacity-clip setting got set somehow.

 

[MatK99]

Thx for reply..

@ taltamir:
I did as you said, same thing. Drive is displayed in Windows Explorer but it doesn't show it's size or free space. When I double click on it, it say it's not formated and wants to format. :S
I bought the drive to use as a backup, but I'm not using it for that atm. Since I planned to reinstall the OS I put about 200GB of stuff on this drive, to just transfer it back to the main drive after the new OS is up (in a day or two). I do have critical data backed up on another drive, but I still have around 200GB here (plus loads of plugins, add-ons, settings, exports,...) that I would HATE to loose.
Any other idea on how to save my data?

@ VirtualLarry
In DiskManagement I see this drive, it say Layout = Partition, Type = Basic, File System = empty, Status = Healthy, Capacity = 32MB, Free Space = 32MB...
So size is 32MB, not GB. True size should be around 931GB, with about 200GB taken.


Another thing I noticed.. You know how, when you connect a brand new drive and go to Disk Management you see the correct size, but it says Unlocated Space and it has a black color grid on it..?.. well, not here. With this one it's a blue color grid and no unlocated space label, has a "Healthy" label. XP really thinks it's a 32MB drive, but unformatted as well (since I can't access it).


Help.. :S

 

[MatK99]

Nobody has any idea?

I did some googling and it seems this in not an unusual thing. Few people report identical problems with identical drives (WD10EADS) and gigabyte mobos. Some were able to fix the problem using HDD Capacity restore program. So I tried it as well. It found the drive, it said "OS reporting 32MB capacity, real capacity 1000GB, restoring capacity". Then it rebooted, but same thing again. The only difference was, XP found the drive straight away (I didn't have to go through Find New Hardware wizard), but again only 32MB capacity. When I tried the program again, it returned an error. After more research I saw one difference between my situation and others that were able to fix the problem using this HDD capacity restore. They reporter XP showed 32MB drive BUT they were able to use that 32MB as if that was the drives real size. While my XP says the drive is not formated and wants to format, so I can't use it, not even that 32MB space.

I connected the drive to my notebook, same thing. I have to use Add New Hardware wizard, then it finds it, but only 32MB size. So it has to be something on the drive, drive is reporting wrong size. And I can't use any Data/Partition recovery, since drive claims it's not formated and it's only 32MB size.
I do have a second, identical drive, which I haven't even opened yet. On my first drive, I didn't create any partitions, I only formated it with all available space. Should I try the same thing on this second drive and see what happens? I'm kinda afraid to do that, I don't want another bad drive.

Any ideas, what can I do?

TIA,
Mat

 

[SunSamurai]

The drive you haven't opened is either bad or good already. It's not something you have power over (unless you're shaking the shit out of them)

Also as another person said, a backup isnt a backup if its your only copy.

I wish you luck, its a horrible way to learn to make several copies of important things... I would know...


Id contact the maker and demand justice.

 

[MatK99]

Well, I'm happy to report, problem fixed! How? No idea really

After about 30th forum reading of a similar problem, someone suggested using Ultimate Boot CD and using their HDD diagnostic program and then the program to restore the factory size. The person also said he uses the "ACHI" setting for the drive, instead of IDE. My drive is SATAII. So I thought I'd give that option a try. I dl the UBCD, changed the bios to ACHI for the drive and booted to CD. UBCD was unable to find the drive, whatever I did. It simply didn't show ANYTHING connected (even if I had 5 drives connected: 2 in RAID1 and 2 in normal mode on ICH9R chip and my external problematic 1TB on Gigabyte Sata chip). So I thought another dead end, restarted the PC, changed bios back to IDE and proceeded to windows. Then it happened. CheckDisk started before windows was up and I noticed it was checking the external drive. Found a bunch of problems, but after 5min I got into windows and there it was, correctly labeled, in plain view, all 931GB of it! It's now listed as a SCSI drive, but who cares, as long as it works.

Have no idea how it just started to work, I had tested IDE / ACHI bios setting before with no luck. I guess it's another of those little mysteries.

Thx everyone for the help and ideas!

Regards,
Mat