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Thread ID: 122633 2012-01-04 02:01:00 Weird drive/partition issue FaceAche (16677) Press F1
Post ID Timestamp Content User
1252014 2012-01-04 12:23:00 Yeah what Paul said, look at the drive itself. It should have the size printed on it, or at least a model number you can google. dugimodo (138)
1252015 2012-01-04 22:28:00 While everything appears to be going fine now, one thing is usually certain, sooner or later thing may start to play up.

(Murphy's Law dictates) This normally happens when you are in a hurry or at the exact time you really need your computer for something important.

Heh, yeah i suspect that might be the case here - if it seems too good to be true, it often is :)

I'll shut the PC down, pop the case open and take a look at the drive.
FaceAche (16677)
1252016 2012-01-04 23:03:00 Okay it's a Seagate Barracuda 7200.7, 120Gbyte, model number ST3120026AS - www.seagate.com ee0a0aRCRD&locale=en-US&reqPage=Legacy

So yeah, there's definitely some weird voodoo going on with this.

I thought that maybe the 1.4tb information showing under Disk Management was incorrect, and that as soon as i reached the physical limit of the drive, 120gb, it'd say "Drive full" or something to that effect, but 200gb of data was on it yesterday, so i'm still at a total loss as to what has happened.

I'll keep using the 434gb Z drive partition, i just won't put anything important on it.
FaceAche (16677)
1252017 2012-01-05 05:49:00 This idea seems crazy, but what if HDD manufacturers shipped HDDs much like CPU manufacturers ship CPUs.

What I'm getting at, is just maybe your HDD was manufactured on a line producing... lets guess 500GB drives.
They then adjust its true capacity via firmware to limit it to the stated 120GB.
So what's inside has the potential to do 500GB... if it could just be unlocked.

More likely your Bios or HDD controller is fubar'ed however, and like the others are suggesting, this will likely not end happily (ie dead drive in the future)
Paul.Cov (425)
1252018 2012-01-05 22:24:00 What I'm getting at, is just maybe your HDD was manufactured on a line producing... lets guess 500GB drives.
They then adjust its true capacity via firmware to limit it to the stated 120GB.
So what's inside has the potential to do 500GB... if it could just be unlocked.

More likely your Bios or HDD controller is fubar'ed however, and like the others are suggesting, this will likely not end happily (ie dead drive in the future)

That's kind of what i was getting at with my earlier suggestion that it might have been an image/iso used when i first bought the PC - it's a Dell machine, so quite likely to be on a large production line type of operation.

I'll keep an eye on the main drive and that 434gb Z drive partition over the coming weeks, and let you know how it goes.
FaceAche (16677)
1252019 2012-01-06 00:11:00 What I'm getting at, is just maybe your HDD was manufactured on a line producing... lets guess 500GB drives.
They then adjust its true capacity via firmware to limit it to the stated 120GB.
So what's inside has the potential to do 500GB... if it could just be unlocked.

That's exactly what is done sometimes - but usually with a limit jumper.

However, it IS possible to also limit a drive in software which can be changed. To check this (and reset to the native capacity) a HDD tool like HDAT2 can be used, or the manufacturer's own tool.

It's also possible the MBR\FAT whatever is corrupted and reporting a fake size. It's also possible that the 200GB+ data is not actually being written, but simply lost.
Agent_24 (57)
1252020 2012-01-06 02:49:00 Sounds like a corrupted partition table to me. You need to check/fix it with some partition managing software. I can recommend Parted Magic for this: partedmagic.com This ISO also includes the TestDisk program which I have used to fix aborted partitioning attempts too. Rod J (451)
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