i bought 2 new 1000GB Samsung Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ disks and run into some problems.
the first HDD i installed worked fine, second HDD i installed showed up as 32Mb.

found a post on a forum to dl Ultimate Boot CD, so i did
i burned it and booted up, started MHDD32 (v4.6)
tried to uncut the HDD (NHPA) and failed.
told me to re-power HDD.

here comes my question:
what do you mean by re-power HDD?
is there a cmd to do it? (couldn't find one, and search got me a few hits, all saying to do it, but not how)
or are you talking about removing the power to the HDD and reinsert it while the comp is still running? (sounds unhealthy)

would really appreciate an response

cheers
Jimmy

Re-power means to unplug the power connector from the hdd and plug it in again....

Rgds

_________________
www.datasave.ro

thank you for the quick response

i tried to unplug the HDD and plug it back (did this a few times)
response from MHDD was:

Drive not ready, then after a few sec:
Do youi want to set Native LBA adress? (y/N) , i picked y
Read NHPA...
Native Maximum LBA adress 1953525167
Continue? (y/N) i picked y
working...
Fail. Try to re-power HDD

am i missing something here?
i tried it 6,7 times, always with the same response.

at what part should i re-power? before typing NHPA, or before the last y/n)
i tried all combos, so right now i'm a little lost as how to proceed.

Are you sure you set jumpers correctly?

_________________
SAN, NAS, RAID, Server, and HDD Data Recovery.

Yep, maybe the drive jumper is in the 'clipped' position.

There are many utilities on the web that allow you to force HPA successfully.

Do a bit of googling - plenty about.

I'd recommend "Hdd capacity restore".
Its freeware.

Dobre

_________________
Murphy was an optimist

Datarecovery in Belgium, Holland, France and Germany
Datarecoverytools http://www.drtools.eu

i went back to the store and got a new one.

but i want to thank you for all the answers

cheers
Jimmy

For those that are having this problem with Samsung 1000GB showing up as 32MB. I have found a solution that worked for me.

When I purchased the Samsung Spinpoint F1 Series HD103UJ 1TB SATA2 7200RPM. I installed it into an External USB/ESATA case and it detected as a 1000GB drive. I then copied over a 200+GB of data onto the drive. The next morning, I rebooted my server so that I could reorganize the drives in my machine. I didn't actually do anything except tell Windows Server 2003 to reboot.

Upon Windows rebooting. I was missing my new drive, atleast I though I was missing it, because there was a 32MB drive there. So I powered down the removeable case and powered it back up. But still there was no 1000GB drive present, just a 32MB. I found this very strange. I then tried the drive on my notebook and still 32MB.

I then started googling and found that this sometimes happens with the Samsung 1000GB and Gigabyte motherboards, which is what I was using. I then found, on a few fourms, that there was an application supplied by Samsung called ESTOOL, which can fix the problem. I downloaded this application but it failed to allow me to update the LBA. It still wanted to set the drive at 32MB. The then found there was a another version of this application SAMSUNG HUTIL v2.10, but these would not work either. The application keep returning Access Denied or Timeout Errors.

After reading some more forums, I can across an application called MHDD which people said fixed there problems when the Samsung ESTOOL didn't work. So I downloaded this application and followed the instructions to "UNCUT" the drive and then I tried the HPA command but still no luck. Drive was stuck in 32MB mode.

After nearly 8 hours of searching and running these programs. I found a link to another program called HDAT2.

I followed Method 1 from the FAQ on that site
Q1: I received a 40 GB drive in replacement for a 20 GB model in PC. The drive is reported as 20 GB capacity. How can i get full capacity ?
which involves SET MAX and adjusting the LBA on the drive, this is very similar to to the methods used in the ESTOOL and MHDD, but once again it failed.

I then moved on to Method 2. Which is to restore the Device Configuration Menu and reset the DCO, after selecting the restore method under this menu. My drive was back. FIXED, now showing 1000GB (931GB actually)

The problem appears to be related to the drive being set from 48 bit LBA to a 24 bit LBA, this stops the other programs from being able to change the LBA to the correct size.

I hope this is helpfully to others with this problem.

HDAT2 SAVED MY DRIVE

Regards
Disfusion

I know this topic is old, but I just had the same issue so I thought I would post a slightly different method where MHDD worked for me.
First, the drive information from the sticker on the drive

Samsung Model HD103UJ (1000GB/7200rpm/32M) REV.A
LBA 1953525168 1000.0GB F1_3D
P/N 480911CQA37725

I had basically the same problem described and ran into the same issues as disfusion using MHDD trying to fix it. I also tried the low level format using the "HARD DISK WIP TOOL" but got the error about not enough sectors to run. For some reason I decided to try to manually "CUT" the disk using MHDD. When asked for the LBA I entered 1953525168 and made it "persistent". At this point MHDD returned the drive information (SHIFT+F2) as 931GB. From here I went back to the low level format tool that should reset the LBA to the factory setting (just in case I entered the wrong number). This worked. I then formatted the disk in windows and everything seems to be good.

Also note, I’m using this drive as an external in a recently purchased Sabrent USB 3.0 external enclosure. MHDD wouldn’t work using the USB connection. I had to find a PC where I could connect the drive directly using a SATA cable.

Lastly I’ll say this drive came from an old PC of mine that I built with a Gigabyte motherboard.

Thanks to hddguru for having all this great information available.

fishy29er (bicycle reference if you’re wondering)

GigaByte BIOS bug results in loss of 1TB capacity:
http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=150&p=275

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.