Hello everyone,

I recently built my own rig with the following parts:

i7 930 cpu
nVidia GTS 240 graphics
Asus P6X58D-E mobo
2x 2gb Kingston DDR3 2000mhz ram
550 watt coolermaster psu
Western Digital Caviar Black 7200rpm 1TB HD with 64mb cache

I tried installing Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit but when it came to selecting the hard drive, it said my 1 tb drive was only 32mb.

I installed and booted into xp with my old Seagate 320gb hard drive and everything worked fine. I've tried using the HDD Capacity Restore Tool but it won't even recognize that there is a drive there. Im really confused and I dont know what to do/try next.

Any help would be very much appreciated.

western digital 7200.11? Send back to shop for new one.

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It seems that the unluckiest people in the world are those that don't backup.
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550watt with i7 and gts 240? that psu wont last long with crysis 3d at full detail...i know its coolermaster - but still 550watt????

_________________
It seems that the unluckiest people in the world are those that don't backup.
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Not heard of these....

Ahh - sorry i was thinking of diamondmax.

edit- still send back to shop for replacemetn if no data on it.. thats first thing id do

_________________
It seems that the unluckiest people in the world are those that don't backup.
Free Solutions
Picasaweb- Pictures and movies | Dropbox - Documents and other..

I haven't heard of a Diamondmax 7200.11 either. ;-)

BTW, Seagate have moved on to 7200.12 and Barracuda XT models.

Does the HDD Capacity Restore Tool see the 320GB drive?

You could try HDAT2. See Q1 in the FAQ.

HDAT2/CBL Hard Disk Repair Utility:
http://www.hdat2.com/download.html

User's Manual HDAT2 v4.6:
http://www.hdat2.com/files/hdat2en_v11.pdf

HDAT2 FAQ:
http://www.hdat2.com/hdat2_faq.html

What? GTS 240 max power draw is specified at 70W... It doesn't even take a supplemental power connector. TDP on an i7 930 is 130W. I think a 550W psu is going to be able to handle that, as long as it isn't complete garbage.

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

BTW recently I have seen quite a few 1TB WD drives coming in here broken. Some are less than a few weeks old and one was only 5 days old when it came in. I would RMA the drive and then buy a new one that is not WD. You can get a Samsung or Hitachi that will do a lot better for you on this one. I would not even bother to try and fix this drive it is not worth it. Get rid of it and good luck on your new system.

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Iorana Haraharaini

@ fzabkar
Yes, it recognizes the Seagate 320gb drive. Ok i'll try HDAT2, if that doesn't work, i'll just get it replaced with another.
Thanks for your help and rapid responses everyone, I really appreciate it. This is my first time posting in this forum and im very impressed, i'll definitely recommend this to others and come back myself if i ever have drive problems again.

Your 32MB capacity issue is sometimes reported by users after attaching a 1TB drive, of any brand, to a Gigabyte motherboard with an Xpress Recovery BIOS. In such cases the full native capacity will be restored by HDAT2. HDAT2 should also tell you that a HPA is active.

If the above scenario exists, then any replacement drive of 1TB capacity or greater will also be truncated by the same BIOS bug.

I have the same problem, my WD 1Tb "green" drive shows as 30mb, randomly. I'm pretty sure it is an HPA problem.

I'm having trouble restoring it's capacity because it is the only HDD on the system and I have since zero'd it out using killdisk (in an attempt to resolve the problem).

I have been using a flash drive to try different boot-up programs to remove the HPA (I use my laptop to set up the flash drive). I've seen multiple posts saying how ultimateboodcd or MHDD programs have resolved their issue (the same issue i'm having). However, these posts will just read, "SUCCESS - MHDD resolved my problem! THANKS" and are very uninformative from that point.

I've tried both of these programs and once I boot to them I cannot figure out what commands they are running to identify max LBA and how to set it to max. I just see a bunch of menu items that mean nothing to me.

I cannot use HDD capacity recovery tool since I do not currently have an OS. Also, all my boot programs must be ran from a flash drive h2dat seems to not work with flash drives, I've tried the CD image and the floppy image seperately.

Could someone explain how to navigate in either ultimatebootcd or MHDD to remove my HPA? I'm fairly literate, but these programs bring a whole new level of difficulty without having thorough guides for menu items, commands, and how to execute.

Thanks

Note: I'm not concerned about data recovery. I would only like to recover a 1Tb drive to continue using it

In MHDD, hit F1 to get a list of possible commands. Or, you know, read the documentation.

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

Sorry, I wasn't clearer. I was trying to say that the documentation for MHDD wasn't very helpful to me. I was hoping someone could "dumb it down" for me.

Here is what I want to do, but I'm not sure how to do it:

1) boot up with MHDD
2) select my HDD
3) read its max size
4) set its max size

My 1TB HDD only displays as 30mb and I feel an HPA has somehow hidden the rest.

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

I'm still not sure if you are trying to help or just douching on this topic. Are you having a bad day or something? What type of posts do you expect to encounter in a HDD recovery forum?

Since it looks like the previous pic host is having issues, here is that picture again. It shows a list of commands that MHDD has and what they do. If you can't figure out how to get where you want to go with that, then maybe it would be a good idea to get a more computer-oriented friend to help you out.

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.