I have a 60G Hitachi HD, IC25N060ATMR04-0. The factory size is, 117210240 LBA'S. But in BIOS and in normal use, only 110479812 sectors are visible.
I lauched HDAT2 v4.5.2, it reported that HPA is enabled, then entered HPA menu, it showed correct current size and correct factory size. I pressed F7, and set MAX by the facutory size, then reset.
After reset, BIOS found something like this HD but with 0M size. Lauched HDA2 again, HDAT2 could never find this HD.
I tried MHDD later, it could find a 0M HD at the right slot, but could do nothing on it. Any command failed with, 'Does not support LBA mode'.

Could anyone kindly tell me why? Thank you.

This HD belongs to my friend's ThinkPad. Actullay I neve knew IBM laptop uses HPA as their restore media until I searched internet today.

But i still believe that this area can be accessed as normal storage area, doesnt it?

try to use NHPA command from mhdd. it will unlock ur hdd to its max size

Thanks for your concern.

I'd tried NHPA in MHDD, it gave me,
Does not support LBA mode
and failed.

i think has no hpa command or try setting the jumper in master mode and then try hpa

This hitachi hard drive is of an IBM laptop. I installed this HDD into my desktop and run HDAT2. HDAT2 detected that HPA was enabled on this HD and I set max lba to factory size.
After power down and on again, BIOS could not find this HD at all. Got in DOS, neither HDAT2 or MHDD could detect this HD and never.

Yesterday, my friend brought this HD's owner IBM laptop. I installed this HD back into the laptop. First power on, system still could not detect any HDD, then I entered BIOS, set security to Disabled and reset. Then system CAN detect this HDD and it works fine as before.

I think IBM laptop has its special command interface with their HDD. Because the laptop had to be returned, I could not do any further test on it.

i think there must be a small problem in the setting of the laptop bios that has to be corrected .