School boy error, or seriuos problem?

[Andy3536]

Just put together my little media center PC and for some strange reason it's only detecting the HDD as 33meg, but it's a 1TB samsung F1 drive.
Reading through the manual no bios settings jump out as being wrong but there are some i'm not to sure of.

Have changed the sata port on the mobo and checked to make sure i fitted them right and all seems right.


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Also running with old 500W thermal take PSU, E6600CPU, with the nova-t 500 tv card.

Any clues?

[directhex]

is it the BIOS or OS detecting the wrong size?

[kalniel]

At what point is it showing as 33MB? Is it just at the auto-detect screen or does the windows installer also show the partition as 33MB?

[Andy3536]

At first i didn't notice in the bios that the HDD was only at 33meg, so i put the vista disc in and after a couple of options (country and keyboard setup) i had a little screen to choose where the OS would be installed, thats where it first said 33meg and also that it couldn't install the OS with that much.

So back into the bios and it says 33meg and when you hit enter to 'detect' it's still 33meg. No OS installed yet

[kalniel]

Ok, then it looks like you're hitting a logical unit cap - max 267 cylinders = 65k logical units = 32 megabytes.

You might be able to fix this on the hard drive directly - use the ultimate boot CD

Ultimate Boot CD - Download the UBCD

find MHDD under diagnostic tools and run it. Select the drive and at the prompt type the command 'uncut'.

[Andy3536]

Ok, then it looks like you're hitting a logical unit cap - max 267 cylinders = 65k logical units = 32 megabytes.

You might be able to fix this on the hard drive directly - use the ultimate boot CD

Ultimate Boot CD - Download the UBCD

find MHDD under diagnostic tools and run it. Select the drive and at the prompt type the command 'uncut'.

I think it said 64 cylinders?
Downloading that now, shouldn't have to do this with a brand new drive though should you?

[kalniel]

I might have got that bit wrong then, but I have heard of the 32meg limit before and that tool should fix it.

No you shouldn't have to do it with a new drive or any drive, but I think it's just a consequence of technology moving on so fast - 1TB was beyond comprehension not that long ago. That or Samsung didn't do the correct settings out of the factory.

edit: if uncut doesn't work, run 'hpa' - it'll report the maximum sector count you can use, so type that in to set the LBA to that.

[Andy3536]

I might have got that bit wrong then, but I have heard of the 32meg limit before and that tool should fix it.

No you shouldn't have to do it with a new drive or any drive, but I think it's just a consequence of technology moving on so fast - 1TB was beyond comprehension not that long ago. That or Samsung didn't do the correct settings out of the factory.

edit: if uncut doesn't work, run 'hpa' - it'll report the maximum sector count you can use, so type that in to set the LBA to that.

Ok, when you go into MHDD 32 v4.6 you get 2 options, to run with and without scsi, shipt F5 brings up the command prompt and typing uncut is invalid command.


Gigabyte website had the fix for bios version F2 down as 'fixing 1000gbit detection issue, but that hasn't solved it.
The other bios updates are beta and don't specificly say fixes HDD problems. They look like just CPU support added.

GIGABYTE - Support - Motherboard - BIOS - GA-G33M-S2L

[kalniel]

Run without scsi. I think it needs to scan and select a drive before you can use uncut.

A quick google should find you the MHDD web/man page.

[Andy3536]

Plugged the drive into my other PC (left) and the drive appears in device manager but only apears as 32meg.
What the is going on

[kalniel]

Just saw some posts in the scan section that address the exact same issue. This page was recommended:

Atola Technology » Blog Archive » Restoring Factory Hard Drive Capacity

[Andy3536]

Ok tried the uncut command and it just kept saying re power you drive or some such rubbish.
Also the utility posted above seems to be for in an operating system with the only drive attatched being the problem drive.
To quote from you link
'ONLY the 1TB Samsung can be attached for the tool to work.'
I can put this in my PC (left) and run it with the samsung attatched as a second drive or i run somthing through the boot menu in the PC i've just built.
Will it actually work either way, was the quote wrong?

[Andy3536]

Right, i have tried the program above but as i feared it only detects the first HDD on the PC and is a windows program.

[Behemoth]

I know this may sound silly, but does the drive have a jumper on it that limits it to 32 gig at all ?? I made this misstake with my 400 gig Hitachi the other week.

[Andy3536]

I know this may sound silly, but does the drive have a jumper on it that limits it to 32 gig at all ?? I made this misstake with my 400 gig Hitachi the other week.

No jumper supplied with it for standard sata operation. Keep the suggestions coming though.

Got this PC built and it's gonna be covered in dust before the thing works.

[Behemoth]

Last resort but have you tried a different SATA cable ??