Hitachi 1TB external only recognized by Windows as 500GB

[PremiumG]

Anyone ever run into something like this?

I bought an external Hitachi USB 1TB Hard drive, its brand new, none of the warranty stickers have been tampered (at first thought, I believed someone had swapped the drive inside the enclosure).

Drive Management only sees a 500GB drive to format. I did make sure there was no other partition, but Windows only sees a 500GB drive to partition.

I have Windows XP with latest updates and SP3; I can't figure it out for the life of me.

 

[Keitero]

Have you tried using WD Diags for Windows? It can tell you the model of the drive and you can also run either a low lvl format or check the drive for bad sectors. That will at least shed some light on it being a 1TB drive.

 

[myocardia]

If the words "RAID" or "mirror" or "JBOD" was anywhere in either the name, or the description, you've bought yourself one of those external drives with two physical drives inside, like these, and it's most likely setup as a RAID 1 array.

 

[PremiumG]

The hard drive is not RAID or JBOD.

I ran WD Diags for Windows and it detects as a 500GB.

I'm in correspondence with tech support and will try to get a RMA.

 

[PremiumG]

turns out some bastard bought and returned this hard drive before i did. Even though the warranty stickers look intact, he was able to open the drive and swap the 1TB with a 500GB.

Unfortunately I didn't notice until now (month after I bought the drive) because I didn't need it till now.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: PremiumG
turns out some bastard bought and returned this hard drive before i did. Even though the warranty stickers look intact, he was able to open the drive and swap the 1TB with a 500GB.

I had that happen with a Sound Blaster card years ago. Somebody substituted an 8-bit Soundblaster for a 16-bit version and returned the box to Best Buy.