Hi, I have a big problem thats been buggin' me. I have a Seagate 80Gb, and it only shows up as 5200Mb. This has not affected me until I istalled Vista, which didn't detect it. Rarely enough, the windows I had it installed (Xp pro Sp2) did detected as a 80Gb, and the system bios did not. No matter in which other computer I plug it into, it shows as 5200Mb, and I do have DynamicDriveOverlay http://rhs08.com Got root?

Why are you running DynamicDriveOverlay? It's only necessary when running a large HDD on an old PC that can't recognize the full capacity. Backup any data you need, fdisk & format

Thanks for the tips, problem is, if I backup my files (To secondary IDE drive, 200Gb) I won't be able to reboot. That is, the OS, like WinXp. Or can I? I've never copied a drive, then re-copied to the original. Is it possible to do this? http://rhs08.com Got root?

Could you be misreading something? The 5200 could be the rotation speed of the drive, not the size. Do yourself a favor BACKUP! Sorry, I do not check for private messages

If you've got an overlay on it then it's likely the capcacity limiting jumper is set. That would cause the bios to see it as a smaller drive--but probably 32 gig. The 5200 is an odd number unless you're mistaking it for the speed as ham30 mentioned. Also, a 2 gig machine won't have a problem seeing an 80 gig drive so as jam said, there's no reason for the overlay. Was it originally on another motherboard? If so that may be part of the problem. Using the installation disk that came with the 80 gig should allow you to remove the overlay. But it may destroy all your files in the process. Rather than cloning the drive to the 200 gig and then back to the 80, can't you just backup the stuff you want to keep--documents, pictures, etc.--and then wipe the 80 gig, reinstall the OS and copy it back? Well anyway, first check the capacity limiting jumper and verify the 5200 is the reported capacity and not the speed and then decide what to do.

Sorry. Mistype, its 52000. And I just ruined my drive, I was going to see if I could remove the DDO non-destructively, and somehow I updated the restored the MBR I set a couple a years ago. Back then, I used FAT32, and now it shows wrong file system and wrong size, and no, I did not format it. I'm trying to find a way to edit the MBR to change it. Any good tools out there? And do you guys know a way to change the BCD (boot file on Vista) so I can ADD or EDIT to it? some program out there? and I cant use the one provided by microsoft, it just doesn't work. Thanks. http://rhs08.com Got root?

Running fdisk/mbr from a 98 bootdisk would restore the mbr to what it was when it left the factory. I don't know if that would fix your problem or not. Check this thread from last year about accessing a DDO partition using linux: http://computing.net/hardware/wwwboard/forum/37916.html