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Hi,
I have been using the new Seagate 1.5TB drive with a BlacX SATA-USB enclosure as a temporary repository for data. This has been working flawlessly with a full 1.5TB partition. I believe the partition was created with an NTFS quickformat the first time around.
I recently tried to put the drive inside a machine to replace a striped pair of drives. To my horror, when I put it into the machine the drive size was reported as 465.7GB and the data became inaccessible (not formatted). Disk manager doesn't report the missing 1TB of space and shows only 500GB fully partitioned.
I thought it was just a size reporting problem took the drive out and switched it back to the original configuration in the USB enclosure. However, the messed up partition persists and all the data is inaccessible.
I am not sure what happened, but it looks like Windows Server 2003 has redone the partition table.
Any suggestions on how to get my data back would be appreciated. I am currently trying DIY DataRecovery iRescue software to search for the missing folder structure. There is about 1TB of video data that I need to recovered.
Thanks,
Chris
Thanks for the suggestion. I'm giving it a try. Acronis Disk Director does not work with USB-connected drives that aren't recognized by the BIOS at boot. I've got the drive installed in another machine (this time Asus P5B) but it also shows only 465.78 GB available in Windows Disk Management and Disk Director didn't find anything wrong.
I've deleted the partition and now have Recovery Expert hunting for deleted partitions. I'm very worried that Windows thinks this drive's capacity is only 465.78GB and not the 1.5TB. Other than the 48bit LBA issue for 137GB drives, I was not aware of Windows limitations on HDD size for commercially available drives. Any tips on how best to proceed are appreciated.
Thanks
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Something is funny here. 465GB is what a 500GB drive will show.
The thing is this. Your drive has four 375GB platters. Doesn't appear to be any way to get 500GB out of it.
Somehow, as you state, Windows has reconfigured the drive as a 500GB.
Have you looked in Disk Management? The remaining 1TB should still show. If nothing else as unallocated.
Try using a live version of Linux on the drive to see what that says.
Also try Seagate's drive fitness tool to see what IT says.
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Forgot to ask if you checked the POST screens to see if the drive is properly identified by model and full capacity there?
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I appreciate your responses so far.
To answer your followup, I had the drive in an Asus P5B today and it's showing just 500GB capacity in the BIOS. The strangest thing is that after putting it back into the USB enclosure, it still reports 500GB.
Is it possible that the firmware has somehow gotten scrambled so it thinks it's a 500GB drive? Or is there some large drive parameter that I'm missing in the BIOS?
I'm feeling like an idiot having deleted the partition because the partition could possibly have been fine and it was just a BIOS-level ID issue.
I'll check out the drive fitness tool and report back.
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SeaTools results look fine. One interesting note, on my P5B machine, I get a windows message at startup when this drive is in the machine:
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Windows - Drive Not Ready
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Exception Processing Message c00000a3 Parameters 75b6bf7c 4 75b6bf7c 75b6bf7c
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Cancel Try Again Continue
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Here's the diagnostics results:Model: ST31500341AS
Serial Number: 9VS04GWV
Firmware Revision: SD17
Short DST - Started 10/27/2008 6:08:00 PM
Short DST - Pass 10/27/2008 6:09:05 PM
Short Generic - Started 10/27/2008 6:18:13 PM
Short Generic - Pass 10/27/2008 6:19:14 PM
Identify - Started 10/27/2008 6:22:01 PM
Identify - Pass 10/27/2008 6:22:05 PM
SMART: Supported and enabled
48-bit Address feature set supported: True
Max LBA: 976817134
Host Protected Area features: Supported and enabled
Mandatory Power Management: Supported and enabled
Security Mode: Supported not enabled
SET MAX security extension: 1
Advanced Power Managment: Not Supported
Download Firmware: False
SMART self-test supported: True
SMART error logging supported: True
Drive Temperature(C/F): 48/118
Power-On Hours: 543
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Then there is something wrong with the control circuitry on the drive. If on or two platters were dead the drive wouldn't be showing as a 500GB. I would contact Seagate and complain.
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Problem is resolved.
I contacted Seagate today through the live web support interface. It was surprisingly efficient and helpful. The support engineer told me that I needed to try resetting the max size in the firmware using SeaTools for DOS (http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools/).
It looks like there's a parameter for max size in the drive firmware, and somehow that got set to 500GB, possibly some interaction effect with the GigaByte BIOS. One of the advanced options in SeaTools DOS lets you set drive capacity arbitrarily or to max available. It's not available in SeaTools for Windows. If this procedure fails, then the drive would have to be sent back to Seagate.
After resetting the max size, I used Acronis to restore the partition and my data is back.
Thanks very much for your help. It pointed me in the right direction.
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