WD 1TB drive shows up as 33MB, anybody else seen this?

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Bones

[H]ard|Gawd
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I just got one of those new Western Digital terabyte drives (WD10EACS), and I'm having a problem that I've never seen before. The drive shows up as 33 megabytes... that's not a typo. At first I thought it was a BIOS issue, but I'm getting the same results with a DFI NF4 lanparty mobo, and a Gigabyte 965 board, both with the latest BIOS available. I even tried it with the JMicron controller on the Gigabyte board.

Another forum poster encoutered this problem, and apparently resolved it by switching cables. That didn't work for me.

Can anybody offer a clue about this?
 
Does the drive name appear right in the bios? Have you tried booting with WD's software and running a scan on the drive?

I've never seen that one before, maybe it's partition in fat16 or something lower.
 
BIOS also shows the drive at 33MB. I've tried the drive on a Windows box too, just grasping at straws, and it shows the same thing. GNU parted, fdisk, cfdisk all rely on the BIOS info for the drive, so they can't make a partition larger than 33MB.
 
No biggie...you just lost 966 MB:D


Have it hooked up in a good system and see what wd diagnostic software(or other hd tools) say.
 
so could u describe step by step what u have done since u get the new disk?

i had a similar problem with a 500GB disk, then i installed windows on it and problem solved, then and just then the BIOS recognized the "Lost" GBs. Was wierd though
 
leSLIe said:
so could u describe step by step what u have done since u get the new disk?
Click to expand...

  • Plugged it in
  • Checked BIOS to make sure autodetect was working, noticed 33MB reported. Ignored it.
  • Used hdparm to check out the drive. Saw 33 MB reported, became somewhat concerned.
  • Used parted on the drive, finally realized that the drive wasn't kidding when it reported 33MB.
  • Tried NF4 motherboard, swapped BIOSes, explicitly set LBA mode, tried different SATA cables, different OS (windows).

I just ran WD's diagnostic tool and sent off an email to WD support. I'll post the reply here. Hopefully they give me a straight answer, and not a run-around.
 
I have never heard of this, weird issue. Be sure to come and post back the results.
 
You might try:
1) Removing all other HD's in the system and then see what the BIOS says.
2) Try different SATA connectors on the MB.
3) Look for a new BIOS upgrade and or reset the current one.

BTW, my DFI nf4 ultra-d recognizes the size of these drives.
 
Gumbi said:
You might try:
1) Removing all other HD's in the system and then see what the BIOS says.
2) Try different SATA connectors on the MB.
3) Look for a new BIOS upgrade and or reset the current one.

BTW, my DFI nf4 ultra-d recognizes the size of these drives.
Click to expand...

4) Return the drive and get another.
 
Duh, the problem is clearly that 1tb is its Unformatted capacity. The formatted capacity is probably around 33mb or so :p
 
Gumbi said:
BTW, my DFI nf4 ultra-d recognizes the size of these drives.
Click to expand...

Ah, now this is an important nugget of information. Thanks! I'll still wait for WD's reply, but it seems likely that the drive is bad, and it's not a BIOS problem.
 
Three business days later, and I haven't received a reply from Western Digital. So I'm going to return the drive, and probably get a few of those nice looking Samsung F1s.
 
No, I'm not going to call Western Digital. They advertise email support, and state that the response time could be as long as three business days. If email is so unreliable for them, they should not advertise email support service.
 
Bones said:
No, I'm not going to call Western Digital. They advertise email support, and state that the response time could be as long as three business days. If email is so unreliable for them, they should not advertise email support service.
Click to expand...

I've dealt with several companies that say this too and I have not heard responses back. That is why I go for the phone. If you want to be stubborn, that's your problem. If you want your problem fixed, phone support is the only way to go.
 
protias said:
I've dealt with several companies that say this too and I have not heard responses back.
Click to expand...
Just because you put up with it doesn't make that behavior correct.

If you want to be stubborn, that's your problem. If you want your problem fixed, phone support is the only way to go.
Click to expand...
Being stubborn is not one of my personality traits. I'm fixing my problem with this drive in the manner most convenient for me. I already tried it Western Digital's way, and I will not waste any more time on that, or on this thread.
 
Bones said:
Just because you put up with it doesn't make that behavior correct.


Being stubborn is not one of my personality traits. I'm fixing my problem with this drive in the manner most convenient for me. I already tried it Western Digital's way, and I will not waste any more time on that, or on this thread.
Click to expand...

Glad to see you don't have any stubbornness. :rolleyes:
 
did you ever find a solution to this problem? Just happened to me....

WD 1TB 10EACS drive worked for 2 wks just fine, hooked up to a Gigabyte P965-DS3, & now it shows 33 MB !!

HDTune & WD Lifeguard tools (WDL = useless "tools" btw) treat it simply as a 33MB drive.

TestDisk acknowledges there is a lost/damaged partition of 99x+ MB, but can't seem to get it back. Any suggestions are appreciated ....
 
The problem is caused by the Host Protected Area (HPA) setting of the hard drive. Pretty much any recent Linux liveCD or installed distro can fix this with a simple hdparm command. I didn't figure this out until about a week after I sent the drive back, naturally :rolleyes: I've since seen the issue with other drives, though.
 
I know this is an old post, but I just ran across this problem trying to install a new WD 1TB hard drive in a older system with a Gigabyte GA-8knxp MB. I bought a 1TB drive to replace my third drive which houses Linux on my Dual-Boot machine. BIOS and both OSes reported 33mb for the drive.

Easiest solution for me was to boot in Windows and run HDD Capacity Restore. Simple little program that asked which drive to restore capacity on, click a button to do it and reboot. BIOS and OSes now see full drive capacity.

I posted this for anyone else that runs across the problem. Maybe it will help someone out.
 
EDIT: well was already solved, but HPA was the first thing I thought about. A look into the linux kernel log would have revealed that.

What would be more interesting is what or who sets a HPA on a new drive.
 
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