| Author | Message | ||
     Roy Zider |
Hi: I've been working with a couple of 200GB Win2K-NTFS HDDs, and in both cases the general information about the disk size (in the panel next to the sector display) is limited to 137GB (128GB). 137,438,952,960 bytes. Access Partition 1 shows 186GB (it's a single partition). The last editable sector is only 268,435,454 (1F FFFF FDFF. One of the drives is brand clean, newly formatted. How do I edit the whole thing? Thanks in advance. -- Roy Zider | ||
| Chris |
If I read you correctly, you're talking about two 200GB drives, right? And, they show up as 137GB in the WH Details Panel and as the full 186GB in the Access menu? There's a couple reasons for this: 1) Your BIOS doesn't support 48-bit LBA, which is required to access the full 200GB. Get a BIOS update for your motherboard. If there isn't one, your harddrive manufacturer must've probably provided a Dynamic Drive Overlay utility, (Such as, Ontrack) to allow you to access the drive even on old systems by modifying the BIOS to load its own fix before the OS loads. 2) The drives are connected to a PCI ATA add-in card like Promise, etc.? Most old ATA controllers lack firmware with 48-bit support. Get a newer card with 48-bit support. Btw, I don't understand how WH could detect 186GB, when the BIOS itself fails to see it. Hope that helps! Chris | ||
| Stefan Fleischmann (Admin) |
3) It may help to enable Options | General Options | [x] Check for surplus sectors. This causes WinHex to actively check for the last readable sector on the disk. > Btw, I don't understand how WH could detect 186GB, when > the BIOS itself fails to see it. The Access button menu reads the partition size directly from the partition table. Not all the 186 GB are necessarily accessible sectors. | ||
| Roy Zider |
Chris, Stefan: Thank you for your prompt replies. Chris, everything you say is correct. Stefan, thank you for clarifying where you get your data; I suspected the Access button was reading the size from the partition table, whereas the rest was coming somehow from the BIOS. The motherboard is a Tyan Tiger MPX dual CPU, with the latest BIOS. Tyan swears they support 48-bit LBA. But when I plug the WD2000JB drives into a Promise Ultra100TX2, WinHex does recognize the full drive size correctly. Do either of you have a utility that will check whether the BIOS properly supports 48-bit LBA? Then I can put the problem back to Tyan. At the moment they deny a problem, and I can't edit the drives. I've got them plugged into the motherboard channels, and as I remember I did this because WinHex wasn't picking them up when they were attached to the Promise controller (I may be mistaken about this -- maybe they were the 5th or 6th drive attacned to this system.) Thanks in advance for your help. -- Roy Zider | ||
| Roy Zider |
Stefan: Further clarification of last comment: WinHex sees the 200GB drive on the Promise Ultra100TX2 controller OK, even though it is the fifth drive attached to this platform. I remember now that I moved this drive to the motherboard IDE channel because Norton Utilities DiskEdit was not able to access drives on the Promise controller. Roy Zider | ||
| Chris |
Ah, thanks for clearing that up, Stefan. Hi Roy, Well, I do have a utility to check whether the BIOS supports 48-bit LBA, but its only for the Win9x/ME series of OS's. Here's the link, incase you're interested: http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/iaa/lba_test.htm However, it seems that Win2000 only has 48-bit LBA support with Service Pack 3 and above. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;305098 Yes, I noticed that your Win2000 setup sees the 200GB with the Promise. So, maybe the Promise sort of eliminates the shortcoming. Somehow... :S Could you go into your BIOS and check whether it shows the full 200GB or only 128/137GB? If its the latter, then, you've certainly got a bust BIOS and ask Tyan to directly email you the BIOS with 48-bit support themselves. Btw, check them using the IDE controllers and NOT the Promise. Regards, Chris | ||
| Roy Zider |
Chris: Thanks for the pointer to the Intel lba test program. I read their instructions, and don't see why I wouldn't be able to simply boot from a floppy (into real DOS) and run it. I'll check it out. Also, there's a HDInfo test program I'll check out too (http://www.48bitlba.com/hdinfo.htm) I'll get back on both of these in a couple of days. I'm using W2k SP3 already, so from a read point of view it's not that. And the MBO BIOS did show 200GB size (187GB maybe) when I was first testing this problem. Tyan remains unconvinced. -- Roy | ||
| Chris |
I came across that app (HDInfo) too, but was on the fence about recommending it, since it seemed a bit whacked to charge for something that just checks if you're mobo/BIOS supports 128GB+ drives. :S I suppose it'd do well for the 'layman' though. Anyways, if your BIOS shows the full 200GB (No need to blame Tyan IMO, if their BIOS shows the 200GB), do try that registry edit mentioned in the MSKB link. It seems like thats the only thing that can fix it, since your OS is the only one blind to the true size. Regards, Chris | ||
| Roy Zider |
Chris, Stephan: Using HDInfo 1.0, I confirmed that the Tyan PhoenixBIOS supports 48-bit LBA. The test results (from boot DOS disk) are shown below. (However, it doesn't get the drive geometry right, using 16383-16-63 for all the drives.) Windows 2000 Pro SP3 recognizes both 200GB drives as 200GB (186.30 GB NTFS for the first 200GB drive on Primary - Slave). (Perhaps there was some misunderstanding here, Chris -- W2K has always recognized the size properly) So I guess it's back to WinHex at the moment -- which only recognizes 137/128GB on the 200GB drive attached to the motherboard IDE Primary-Slave channel, while it recognizes 200GB on the other drive (the fifth drive) attached to the Promise Ultra100TX2 controller card. Thank you in advance for your help with this. -- Roy Zider Output from HIInfo: IDEINFO Version 1.0 Copyright (c) 2003 FryeWare All Rights Reserved http://www.48bitlba.com http://www.fryeware.com Primary - Master: Drive Model....................: WDC WD800JB-00CRA1 Drive Serial Number............: WD-WMA8E3509967 Drive Type.....................: Fixed Cylinders......................: 16383 Heads..........................: 16 Sectors........................: 63 Drive Features.................: 48-bit LBA...................: No LBA..........................: Yes DMA..........................: Yes IORDY........................: Yes PIO Modes....................: 3 4 ATA/ATAPI Specs..............: 2 3 4 5 Ultra DMA Modes..............: 0 1 2 3 4 5 Current Ultra DMA Mode.......: Mode 5 Device Drive Size..............: 80026361856 bytes [80.0 GB] BIOS Drive Size................: 80026361856 bytes [80.0 GB] Primary - Slave: Drive Model....................: WDC WD2000JB-00DUA0 Drive Serial Number............: WD-WMACK1902331 Drive Type.....................: Fixed Cylinders......................: 16383 Heads..........................: 16 Sectors........................: 63 Drive Features.................: 48-bit LBA...................: Yes LBA..........................: Yes DMA..........................: Yes IORDY........................: Yes PIO Modes....................: 3 4 ATA/ATAPI Specs..............: 2 3 4 5 6 Ultra DMA Modes..............: 0 1 2 3 4 5 Current Ultra DMA Mode.......: Mode 5 Device Drive Size..............: 200049655808 bytes [200.0 GB] BIOS Drive Size................: 200049655808 bytes [200.0 GB] Secondary - Master: Drive Model....................: SAMSUNG SV1204H Drive Serial Number............: 0527J1FW102878 Drive Type.....................: Fixed Cylinders......................: 16383 Heads..........................: 16 Sectors........................: 63 Drive Features.................: 48-bit LBA...................: No LBA..........................: Yes DMA..........................: Yes IORDY........................: No PIO Modes....................: 3 4 ATA/ATAPI Specs..............: 2 3 4 5 6 Ultra DMA Modes..............: 0 1 2 3 4 5 Current Ultra DMA Mode.......: Mode 5 Device Drive Size..............: 120060444672 bytes [120.1 GB] BIOS Drive Size................: 120060444672 bytes [120.1 GB] Secondary - Slave: Drive Model....................: WDC WD1200BB-00CAA1 Drive Serial Number............: WD-WMA8C3051564 Drive Type.....................: Fixed Cylinders......................: 16383 Heads..........................: 16 Sectors........................: 63 Drive Features.................: 48-bit LBA...................: No LBA..........................: Yes DMA..........................: Yes IORDY........................: Yes PIO Modes....................: 3 4 ATA/ATAPI Specs..............: 2 3 4 5 Ultra DMA Modes..............: 0 1 2 3 4 5 Current Ultra DMA Mode.......: Mode 5 Device Drive Size..............: 120034123776 bytes [120.0 GB] BIOS Drive Size................: 120034123776 bytes [120.0 GB] BIOS Support 48-bit LBA........: Yes | ||
| Daniel Kirschenbaum |
I know this thread is over a year old, but the reason your 200gb drive comes out to be reported as 186 by windows is for a very simple reason. The reason is that HD manufacturers calculate a GB to equal 1000kb, while OS such as Windows calculate a GB to equal 1024kb. In reality, although we call them "GB" or "gigabytes" in windows, the correct term for this size-type is "GiB" or "Gibibyte". While the size-type used by HD manufacturers is called gigabyte. Gigabyte is a Decimal Multiple, while Gibibyte is a Binary Multiple. Size difference between the two is about 7%. 100GB equals 93GiB.. 200 GB equals 186 GiB. Yeah, I believe it really is false advertising. Here's a converter to check for yourselves: http://www.cactus2000.de/uk/unit/massbyt.shtml |