Here is my story.

A few years ago I bought a new laptop Fujitsu HDD (model: MHS2020AT, 20GB). As I was using an old laptop, I had to use ontrack's dynamic drive overlay. As a result I could use my entire 20GB on my old computer. I changed laptops recently and I decided to use this drive (seldom used, quiet).

1. So I deleted the partitions through fdisk.
2. Ran fdisk /mbr to clean the boot record.
3. Wrote zeros to all the sectors.
4. Used an MBR editor and typed zeros everywhere.

Although I've made so many operations my HDD is recognized as 6GB not 20GB. I connected the drive to my dsktop computer (Asus P4P800S-X, Celeron 2.4GHz) and it is also not recognized as 20GB.

Have I managed to get rid of the overlay or not? Or maybe it is another problem? What should I do?

Thanks in advance for your replies.

Try another Zerofill utility (WD has one that's good).

Do you think that a zerofill will do? From what I have managed to gather, the drive overlay stores information in the master boot sector and not in the 'data' surface of the disk. What is more I have deleted the MBR. I assure you that the disk works absolutely well (used for a total of 20-30 hours) because once I gormat it to 6GB it works normally. I am really puzzled.

The Master Boot Record is on the first sector of the drive and a zero fill utility 'should' get rid of it.

You could also try DelPart:
http://www.russelltexas.com/delpart.htm

Don't run fdisk /mbr.
Use XP's Disk Management to re-format(partition) the drive.

Do yourself a favor BACKUP!
Sorry, I do not check for private messages

ham30,

the problem is that I can't format or partition my drive because all the programs see it as 6GB. BIOS sees it, fdisk sees it, XP and other DOS utilities also see it as 6GB.

I really need something that will once again tell BIOS that this is a big drive...

I will give a try to Delpart.

I have the same problem, but with a Seagate 80Gb, and it only shows up as 5200Mb, 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?

If the bios on your 2.4 gig laptop is seeng it as the wrong size then either:

1) It's identified wrong in cmos
2) A capacity limiting jumper is set (I don't think that drive has one).
3) The drive's firmware is bad.
4) The drive's connection is loose or bad.

DAVEINCAPS,

my laptop is 1.1Ghz andmy desktop is 2.4Ghz, but that doesn't matter anyway. Both machines don't recognize it the right way.

ad.1. Yes, it is identified wrong in BIOS/CMOS

ad.2. No capacity jumper.

ad.3. I don't know about the firmware. The drive works perfectly as 6GB, no read/write problems. How do I repair firmware of fin out that this is the problem?

ad.4. Connection is OK. I have connected it to my laptop, my desktop computer and even through a USB-IDE cable and the results are the same.

I feel kinda 'raped' by Fujitsu. They have offered a program to solve the problem. The program screwed up things eventually and what is more, now the program is not available for free so I have no possibility to install it once again and maybe uninstall it to find out if it helps.

Thank you for your replies, I am still waiting for more.

What I meant by 'identified wrong in cmos' was you may have it manually identified as a 6 gig. Normally you'd just set it as AUTO and the bios would read the firmware to see what it was. But if you specify it as 6 gig then the bios will see it as 6 gig or else give an error about the drive ID being wrong.

This software fix from fujitsu may be the problem. If it rewrote the firmware it may have intentionally or unintentionally set it as 6 gig. You may want to keep bugging them about it.

Otherwise, the wiping utilites you've run will have removed all remnants of the overlay. (That wouldn't have affected the way the bios sees it anyway.) So unless there's something we're not thinking of, it sounds like a firmware problem. Any fix for that would have to be through fujitsu.

Now that I think of it, I've got a fujitsu utility called fjerase. Someone had been having a problem with another 20 gig fujitsu and that was the only thing that fixed it. (It was a different problem than yours and I don't think it was a laptop drive.) I've also got a version of diskmanager for fujitsu with a low level format on it.

Do a google search for fjerase and try it. If you can't find it I'll email it. It may be tomorrow before I can do that and you'll need to post your email address. Add it in the 'email: from mycomputing.net settings' line just above the comment box.

Hi, You did FORMAT the drive? All that was necessary was FDISK for partitions and Format each partition to make the drive usable. Boot files and MBR would have been taken care of automatically.
Good Luck, Jim

DAVEINCAPS,

My BIOS is set to automatically detect the drive. If I had the possibility to type things like sectors, heads, cylinders, LBA etc. I would do it. My bios doesn't have such options.

The fjerase program did not help me. It wrote the whole drive with zeros (judging by the time it took, it wrote to the whole 20GB). In BIOS the drive is visible as 6GB and as you know all further programs and applications take this information for granted and treat the drive as 6GB.

I also have diskmanager for fujitsu but when I go into maitenance options and want to remove dynamic drive overlay it says there is no such thing. When I decide to update dynamic drive overlay it doesn't work either.

Thanks for your effort, though. :-)

JimPIM,

Formatting does nothing. I can format the drive and partition it as I want but only within the 6GB that BIOS reports. The rest is unused.

Bad luck, isn't it?

I will contact Fujitsu and hope they won't ignore me.

Mike

Are you 100% positive your BIOS has no feature that allows you to manually set the HDD's parameters? (I seriously doubt it)

If indeed you are using the parameters applicable to a 6GB HDD, then that's the problem or where part of it lies.

Model: MHK2060AT
Cylinders: 12,416
Heads: 15
Sectors: 63

Model: MHS2020AT
Cylinders: 16,383
Heads: 16
Sectors: 63

Use this as a reference material.

Since you've zero'd the drive there will be no drive overlay so that's why one is not detected.

Try the low level format on the diskmanager disk . From the menu levels it should be:

Advanced options. . . . then
Maintenance options. . . . . then
Utilities. . . . . then
select the drive
choose the low level format option.

It may not help but at this point it's not going to hurt either.

Sabertooth,
I am absolutely sure that my BIOS in my desktop computer (on which I am trying to make the disk work for convenience) has no option to input HDD parameters. All I have is auto.

I've decided to put the disk in my laptop where I could edit cylinders, heads and sectors. Hooray, I thought...

The info you have provided above is right when you use the HDD without LBA and BIOS displays 8GB (after typing 16,383 cylinders). I have searched for quite a long time and found a pdf document (254 pages) from Fujitsu which describes all the aspects of the drive (power parameters, diagnostics etc..)
http://www.fujitsu.com/downloads/COMP/fcpa/hdd/discontinued/mhs-4200-rpm_prod-manual.pdf

In there I have found different information for the cylinders which count 35,264 instead of 16,383. When I put such information the BIOS calculated the HDD at 18,200MB which is about right. When I saved my 'proper' configuration the BIOS showed the right size but the windows installer still sees 6GB (exactly 5,89GB).

So the conclusion is that overriding these settings does not work either as the HDD must have some sort of embedded information that fools the installer.

Today I have sent an e-mail to Fujitsu and will see what they come up with.

I will keep on searching for the solution and hope you will help me :-)

Thanks

Mike

The deal with the 16383/16/63 is those are the maximum figures for a drive when identified using C/H/S parameters. Above that a drive must use LBA. The 16383/16/63 figures corresponds to about 8.4 gig. This figure is written in the firmware of many drives larger than 8.4 gig. So even when one of these larger drives is identified that way in cmos, the bios will see its actual size and not just 8.4 gig. On occasion, with some 40 gig drives connected to motherboards that couldn't see them as AUTO, I would enter the 16383/16/63 figures manually and find the bios would now see the entire 40 gig.

Some bios', such as yours, allow for entry of larger figures. I'm not sure why that is unless it's part of a drive translation routine.

I mentioned above about using the LLF on the diskmanager disk. It's possible you'll get an error message something like 'this drive doesn't support low level formatting'. That seems to be the case more often with laptop drives than desktop.

I got a reply from Fujitsu, here it is:

_____________________

Our HDD is tested prior to the shipment at our factory, and
the storage capacity of HDD is checked there.

MHS2020AT has 20GB storage capacity, and its storage capacity
is not limited by MHS2020AT itself.

Therefore we guess that your problem occurs because the bios
or o/s etc.of your system cannot recognize the storage capacity
of MHS2020AT properly.

Unfortunately we cannot give any advice to your problem because
we do not have the information except HDD itself.

Please consult with your system vender or the shop where you
bought MHS2020AT.
________________________

So the information I got does not reveal anything. I've sent a reply and maybe the second e-mail will be more helpful. Fujitsu did not say a thing about Ontrack's Dynamic Drive Overlay although I wrote that I had it installed. I will wait and keep you posted.

Mike