128 GB limitation

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tiuk

Weaksauce
Joined
Dec 1, 2006
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This is a really weird problem. At work I have a Seagate ST3400620A 400 GB PATA HDD in a Vantec NexStar NST-350U2 enclosure. I tried to put it in the enclosure from a 250 GB Maxtor OneTouch drive because this enclosure has firewire and the system that I want to move the drive to requires it. After I had moved the drive to the Maxtor enclosure it was only reporting 128 GB capacity. Now, no matter what enclosure I try, I can't format the drive to more than 128 GB. I've checked if the drive has capacity jumpers, and it doesn't seem to (can't find anything in the manual I downloaded either).

Anyone have any ideas? I'm pretty much stumped at this point. I've tried several enclosures, all of which have used 250+ GB drives in the past. The system I've also tried two different systems, one running XP SP2, and one with Windows Server 2003 (not sure what service pack, but it has several 250+ GB drive attached). I'm totally lost.
 
Yes, this same drive in the same enclosure has worked on the same system in the past at its full 400 GB capacity.
 
How did you first format the drive? It sounds like you formatted the drive on a pre-SP2 computer and now continue to format the same 128GB partition every time you try to reformat, rather than creating a new partition that is the full size of the drive. . .

How big does disk management (found in control panel -> admin tools -> computer management -> disk management) detect the drive as being? You should see one 128GB partition, and then a bunch of unformatted disk space hopefully.
 
You could also try to expand the volume with GParted (that is, if it not already expanded).

Hmm, I don't know if it will work though, I know with SATA and PATA drives it works internally, but never tried with Firewire. Try it out and let us know.
 
Oooska said:
How did you first format the drive? It sounds like you formatted the drive on a pre-SP2 computer and now continue to format the same 128GB partition every time you try to reformat, rather than creating a new partition that is the full size of the drive. . .

How big does disk management (found in control panel -> admin tools -> computer management -> disk management) detect the drive as being? You should see one 128GB partition, and then a bunch of unformatted disk space hopefully.
Click to expand...

I know it sounds like this, but that is not the case. Disk Management shows the total capacity of the drive as 128 GB, with no unformatted space. I should have mentioned that in the OP, sorry.
 
tiuk said:
I know it sounds like this, but that is not the case. Disk Management shows the total capacity of the drive as 128 GB, with no unformatted space. I should have mentioned that in the OP, sorry.
Click to expand...

Unformatted space is one thing, but Unpartitioned space is another.

You can put a 40GB partition on a 400GB drive and format it and have 100% formatted space.

If you use pre-SP2 durring installed you may hit a limit on the drive size space, although I thought it was more than 128 GB, I'm not certain...
You should be able to create a second partition after installing XP 2 through windows to utilize the extra space.
 
Justintoxicated said:
Unformatted space is one thing, but Unpartitioned space is another.

You can put a 40GB partition on a 400GB drive and format it and have 100% formatted space.

If you use pre-SP2 durring installed you may hit a limit on the drive size space, although I thought it was more than 128 GB, I'm not certain...
You should be able to create a second partition after installing XP 2 through windows to utilize the extra space.
Click to expand...

I apologize, I should have worded that better. With all partitions deleted, the capacity of the drive is reported as 128 GB. The main system I'm doing this on has always had SP2 installed.
 
Bizarre. What happens if you use a boot CD like GParted? And is there any difference if you mount the drive internally rather than using an external case?
 
Tried throwing it in a PC using the mobo's IDE controller. BIOS detects it as 130-something GB. Booted with a gparted live cd, it also saw it as whatever the BIOS did (don't remember the exact capacity, but it was in the 130 GB range, nowhere near 400 GB).

This honestly doesn't make any freaking sense to me, it's driving me nuts. I've used the drive with multiple controllers that can see the full capacity of drives over 250 GB, including an enclosure that this very same drive previously worked with at it's full capacity. Is it at all possible for a drive to be damaged in some way that only part of its capacity shows up? I keep looking for a capacity-limiting jumper or something on the drive, but there's nothing, and no mention of such a feature in the manual.

I'm at my wit's end, unless any has any further suggestions I might just RMA the drive, it's only about a year old and has a five year warranty.
 
i know it sounds wierd but i had the same problem with my HDD once, it pnly read 120 rather than 180 everywhere i looked (read: except the bios cuz im dumb). however i fixed it by running the XP install disk and deleting the partition, then rebooting and creating a new partition... i know it sounds wierd and maybe just a fluke... but it mgiht work
 
Hmm, sounds interesting. Do you have another machine to confirm this on?

Did you try a third party partition utility?
 
Other than gparted? No.

Tomorrow I'll try it in another PC. I'm really not very optimistic at this point, though.
 
What capacity does it report in BIOS?
There is a standard ATA command SET DEVICE CONFIGURATION what changes internal drive configuration.
It has an option to disable/enable reporting support for 48-bit LBA addressing.
with 48-bit LBA disabled, you will get 128Gb limit.
 
BIOS reports 137.4 GB.

Is this SET DEVICE CONFIGURATION command something that I could trigger, get a program to trigger, etc?
 
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