Hitachi 250GB laptop harddisk displaying only 8GB

[gprasad]

Hi,

I have run into trouble as I tried to delete my OEM Vista partitions using FDisk and ran Seagates zero fill over it. All of sudden it now only displays me 8GB as unallocated space available for creating partition.

I have tried Recovery disk of Vista but that will now re-install the vista as HDD is reporting 8GB which is too less for Vista.

I have now installed Windows XP over the 8GB and am trying searching through all the website in trying my luck to recover my original 250GB harddisk state.

I have attempted to run: HardDisk Capcity Restore tool and it displays me first message as "This operation will determine the original factory capacity of the drive. If device is detected by the system, it will now be removed from the Device manager"

After clicking OK on the above message, another message flashes "Device is currently in use and cannot be removed from the system. Please remove manually in the Device Manager and try again"

Need help to proceed further from here.....

Thanks and Regards
Govind

[Vulcan]

@gprasad,
Here are a few comments about how I would fix this type of issue...

I have attempted to run: HardDisk Capcity Restore tool
[...]
After clicking OK on the above message, another message flashes "Device is currently in use and cannot be removed from the system. Please remove manually in the Device Manager and try again"

Correct. You cannot run that utility, if you have booted off the disk which you want to try to "fix". You would need to boot off another disk e.g. add that laptop disk into a desktop PC, via an adapter. This is already explained on the website of the author of this utility - see here:

http://blog.atola.com/restoring-factory ... #comment-7

However, personally, I do not expect that your specific problem will be fixed via that utility.

I have run into trouble as I tried to delete my OEM Vista partitions using FDisk and ran Seagates zero fill over it. All of sudden it now only displays me 8GB as unallocated space available for creating partition.

You will get a clue about the cause of your problem, depending on exactly when (during your use of fdisk, Seatools etc.) the visible disk capacity changed to 8GB. I doubt you have an actual disk problem, due to the specific size you mention of 8GB - more likely causes IMHO include a BIOS limitation of your laptop, and/or you overwrote a disk manager extension i.e. drive overlay (DDO) software (search Google for 8GB limitation to see this).

What disk capacity is shown in Win XP for that disk - disk0 (not the Windows drive letter "C:"), in Disk Manager? Please include a (small) screenshot of that screen, in your reply.

Some other ways to confirm that the drive itself really is a 250GB drive are: You could install Windows software (e.g. HDDScan) to confirm that; or use a bootable CD of MHDD (which uses DOS) which can also confirm the real reported capacity of the hard disk, although that may need a temporary BIOS setting change to use that (search this forum for details of BIOS setting and MHDD).

Since you have the disk, and we don't, you will have to do the work to find the cause in your specific case

[gprasad]

Hurray !

I finally succeed in getting back my HardDisk restored back to original 250 factory setting. All thanks to this Hddguru forum for their kind help and the "HardDisk capacity restore tool". Nothing worked out so far to me...I tried many partition managers (window based and console based), HardDisk tools like MHDD Hitachi FT, HDDScan etc...

You are absolutely correct. I removed my laptops harddisk and connected it to another computer system using sata cable and it ran the above tool. It restored the capacity to original factory setting within seconds.

I am very thankful this tool and this forum for helping me out !!!

Thanks
Govind