External Hard Drive Formatting

L

LoveTheBass

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 13, 2004
Messages
131
All right. I just got my external enclosure so I could use the entire 160 gigs of my hard drive since my motherboard is crap. But, now I need to reformat my external hard drive. I'm not quite sure how to do this over USB, but any help would be great.
 
UPDATE: All right, sorry guys. I reformatted it and it didn't seem to work the way I wanted it to. Like I said, it is a 160 gig, but I can only use 30 Gigs of it. This was the way it was with my crappy motherboard, so I'm at a loss as how I'm supposed to get all those gigs back.
 
Could be a couple things. Make sure you don't have the drive's jumpers set to 'limit capacity' (or something along those lines).

Use disk manager to delete any / all partitions on the drive, create one full-size one.

You said it read that while hooked directly to your motherboard...so figuring it's not the external encloure's fault.

Curiosity...who made the drive?
 
It's a Hitachi drive. There are no limits on the hard drive jumpers. I know it's not the enclosure's fault, but I haven't dealt with them before, so I'm not sure how much of a difference it makes.

EDIT: Just deleted the partition and tried to make a new full-size one. It still is only recognizing the 31 gigs. I deleted the new one, and it says that it has 31 gigs of unallocated space.
 
Is your board's BIOS limited to recognizing that size as the maximum? Can you hook it up to a friends PC that has a "good" mobo and format it there?
 
SP 2. I just got a new Dell Inspiron 9300, so I doubt it as a limit. It has a 60 gig itself, and still doesn't recognize it all.
 
start > run > diskmgmt.msc

whats the reported size of the drive (not the partition)
 
It says:

Disk 1
Basic
31.49 GB
Online

Then in the space where it lays out the sized boxes, it says 31.49 GB, Unallocated.
 
well personally Id pull the drive from the enclosure and attach it internally via IDE
and try again, simplifying the problem

get it correctly recognized there, partition & format it and then put it back in the USB enclosure

are you comfortable doing that?
 
It was having this problem before I put it in the USB enclosure, that's why I got it in the first place. My desktop is such crap that I can't have two hard drives at the same time, the hard drive has already been formatted inside the enclosure, so it seems that I'm almost out of luck. I don't know what would change if I put it back onto regular IDE either.
 
Have an idea
BIOS > PCI\PNP (Plug & Play) Submenu > Forced Update ESCD
(Extended System Configuration Data)
 
I actually can't get it to recognize the drive like it does with the internal hard drive in My Computer, so I'm wondering if it will pick it up in the BIOS? Just want to establish that it will before I begin restarting my computer a bunch of times.
 
I couldn't find a Plug and Play option in the BIOS on my desktop, so I'll try with the laptop and see if there's any luck.
 
Hitachi Deskstar (sorry) Model: HDS722516VLAT80
ATA/IDE
Capacity: 164.7 GB

Sorry if that's not exactly what your'e looking for, but that's what it's saying on the hard drive.
 
I finished scouring the BIOS on the Inspiron for PCI/PNP and just couldn't find anything. The closest I got was MiniPCI which only had an enable and disable feature.

EDIT: All right, I've got it showing up in My Computer again, if that helps anything...
 
K, according to this:

http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/techdocs/2E2EE29C9AF7844786256CE9005426F6/$file/D7K250_ig.pdf

there should be two jumpers on the drive for full capacity.

?

Oops...look like you'll have to copy-paste that addy into your browser.
 
I agree. I changed them and it's only recognizing that much still. Deleted the NTFS partition again, reformatted it, still only showing ~33 gigs.
 
If it wasn't the jumpers, formatting or partitioning, I can only see one of two options.

1. The hard drive is bad
2. The disk is still only being formatting with the limit set on it.

Anyone else have any input?
 
Is the bios actualy limited to 30GB? You mentioned something along the lines of having a 60gb, but it wasnt clear if you had that in the problem machine or not. If thats the case then its probably a hardware imposed limit, although ive never heard of it affecting external drives.

Youre absolutely positive youre CHOOSING, ntfs for the format option? IIRC Xp defaults to fat32 for external drives.

Only other thing i can suggest is hook it up to IDE and get the manufacturers diagnostic tools, 30gb sounds feasible if only 1 platter is running, but i think thats prob incredibly unlikely.
 
Herulach said:
Is the bios actualy limited to 30GB? You mentioned something along the lines of having a 60gb, but it wasnt clear if you had that in the problem machine or not. If thats the case then its probably a hardware imposed limit, although ive never heard of it affecting external drives.

Youre absolutely positive youre CHOOSING, ntfs for the format option? IIRC Xp defaults to fat32 for external drives.

Only other thing i can suggest is hook it up to IDE and get the manufacturers diagnostic tools, 30gb sounds feasible if only 1 platter is running, but i think thats prob incredibly unlikely.
Click to expand...

At the moment, I have the external hooked up through my 9300 which has 60 gigs. I got it not a week ago, so I hope that it has the most updated BIOS settings. Yes I am sure it is being formatted in NTFS, but for curiousity sake, what would be the difference in using Fat32?
 
LoveTheBass said:
At the moment, I have the external hooked up through my 9300 which has 60 gigs. I got it not a week ago, so I hope that it has the most updated BIOS settings. Yes I am sure it is being formatted in NTFS, but for curiousity sake, what would be the difference in using Fat32?
Click to expand...
FAT32 has a maximum size limit of around 30Gb/partition.

Also if the pc is anything newer than about 2 years you shouldnt have any trouble with hard disk limits (maybe at 127 GB but not too likely)

My last suggestuion still stands then, hit up this site and see if you get any errors.

Specifically the feature tool, which allows you to:
Change the predefined capacity of the drive. This option can be used in situations where there is a BIOS limitation and the drive is not recognized. See the Users Guide for specific details
Click to expand...
 
I'll take a look at the utility you linked to and I'll get back to this with results when I get home.
 
All right.

The Feature Tool worked when I hooked it up to the desktop internally. I updated the capacity on it, and now both computers are detecting all of the hard drive space.

Thanks for the help everyone!
 
LoveTheBass said:
All right.

The Feature Tool worked when I hooked it up to the desktop internally. I updated the capacity on it, and now both computers are detecting all of the hard drive space.

Thanks for the help everyone!
Click to expand...
Sweet, well random that it should come set with the wrong capacity. Oh well, glad to see you got it sorted.
 
I didn't think this deserved a new thread, but I have a final question. The external is working great now, no problems whatsoever. I do want to know if there is a way to hook up the external to both my desktop and notebook at the same time. It has two firewire ports and a USB 2 port, so could it be possible?
 
HTPC Rookie said:
Ahhh...SAN on the cheap! Been there tried that. Nope, don't work.
Click to expand...

LOL

but I think that would be NAS on the cheap :p
There are some DNAS enclosures (Direct Network Attached Storage)
basically any external with an ethernet port (but I havent seen any gigabit)
and Linksys has a USB to Ethernet link (USB 2.0 external enclosure > Link > LAN)
http://www.linksys.com/products/product.asp?prid=640&scid=43
again 10\100

when that tech hit gigabit its going to simply fly off the shelves, since thats the same effective transfer rate as IDE
 
You can also get some routers with usb ports that will take external drives, and then you have it wireless to your laptop too, admittedly they are ~ £100 and its not as fast, but its an option.
 
Ice Czar said:
LOL

but I think that would be NAS on the cheap :p
There are some DNAS enclosures (Direct Network Attached Storage)
basically any external with an ethernet port (but I havent seen any gigabit)
and Linksys has a USB to Ethernet link (USB 2.0 external enclosure > Link > LAN)
http://www.linksys.com/products/product.asp?prid=640&scid=43
again 10\100

when that tech hit gigabit its going to simply fly off the shelves, since thats the same effective transfer rate as IDE
Click to expand...

Nope, what he'd want to do would be closer to a SAN than NAS. Boiled (way) down a SAN uses an extension to a computer's bus, IE: Fibre channel, SCSI, iSCSI. Since he's asking about hooking two computers to one centrailized storage device using USB / 1394, it would be a SAN.

NAS is as it's name implies...NETWORK attached storage, using network protocols (TCP/IP, etc.).
 
hmmm....
Network Attached Storage - is a term used for RAID, tape and other mass storage systems which have an integral network connection such as ethernet or fibre-channel, These devices can be connected as a network resource rather than just attached to a particular server.

Storage Area Network. This term was first coined to describe networks based around fibre-channel, but nowadays SAN's can also be include other connection technologies such as ethernet and even the internet. SAN is really a networking concept in which the software has a knowledge of the quantity and value of data stored in mass storage devices and the characteristics of those storage devices. In a way SAN is a superset of traditional networking thinking. In SAN systems it's not just enough to know that data is moving from A to B. The software also has to know about the backup strategy, data recovery and application software specific attributes to preserve and reconstruct the environment in case of a failure or system reconfiguration. This aims to automatically replicate many functions which were previously managed by people called systems administrators.
Click to expand...

see Ive got a DotHill SANnet, basically just an external SCSI RAID array, untill you load up the software in the attached server,
I dont bother with that and its just a DAS or NAS (depending on your locale)


BillR said:
Quit fooling around, get you one of these instead:
http://www.buffalotech.com/products/product-detail.php?productid=97&categoryid=19
1-T NAS for about the cost of the drives ;)
Click to expand...

and thats Gigabit too :D
the smallest array I*ve seen so far
 
I see your point. The definition of SAN has grown since I did my studying.

Basically any type of SAN could be considered a type of NAS. EG: my Eurologic Fibre chassis has two Fibre interfaces on it...one hooked each to two machines. Both my machines can see the drives as local storage, but only the partitions I allocated to the specific machine.

But since I have shared the drives on my machines, I can see them over my network, making the whole setup essentially a NAS device.

I could see how that would work backwards too...an external USB box shared through a machine, accessible by multible machines, could be a form of SAN also.

I can also use the Fibre HBAs to pass TCP/IP, which means I could use the Eurologic as a sort of network bridge between the two machines. I don't though, I have Fibre NICs in all my machines. Keeps the traffic down.

Where did you get that quote from? I'd like to catch up some.

Oh and, thank for the heads-up. Got me thinking again.
 
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