external harddrive shows too less capazity

[turbo+]

I recently upgraded my hard drive on my notebook from 80 to 160 Gb. That left me with my old Fujitsu MHT2080AT 80 GB. So i bought an external enclosure and hooked it up to my notebook via USB. But now it only shows 8 GB instead of its 80 Gb!?! I tried to make a new partition with Partition Magic and Disk Management (btw, i am running Windows XP). I tried to install it back into my notebook and there it shows (after formating) 80 GB - once it put it inter the external enclosure i have to format it and it has only 8 GB. Even Partition Magic let me only make a partition that is only 8 Gb big. The HD in the notebook has the pin set to master and the external to slave. I am at the end of my wisdom and hope someone here has a great idea?!?
Thanks for any help

[dobrevjetser]

Try the "hdd capacity restore" program. Its free and you can find it on the internet.

Regards,

Dobre

[turbo+]

i tried the "hdd capacity restore" program already. the program shows only 8 Gb too. It seems to me that there is an issue in XP?!? Can it be that the driver for the HD screws things up?
When i formated the HD when it was installed in the computer it showed 80 Gb - after installing it into the external enclosure, Partition Magic showed 80 Gb, but it could only format it to up to 8 GB - it didn't let me choose a bigger size. After formating it in Partition Magic it only shows the 8 Gb - i am really puzzled.
Can it be that i got a wrong external enclosure (maybe for SATA - my HD is PATA)?? I ordered PATA, but it doesn't say anything about that on the package.

[dobrevjetser]

Sata and pata have totally different connectors, so your enclosure should be ok.
However, best to try another one to be sure.

Dobre

[Vulcan]

once it put it inter the external enclosure i have to format it

That isn't normal - you should be able to use the old HDD from your notebook in a USB enclosure without having to re-format it, and the reason could be ...

The HD in the notebook has the pin set to master and the external to slave.

Did the instructions for your specific USB enclosure definitely state to set the HDD to slave? I've never seen that be needed by a normal one-drive USB enclosure. I suggest putting the jumper on the HDD inside the USB enclosure back to master, and re-test.

Good luck

[dobrevjetser]

Hi Vulcan,

I think yoiu could be right. I overlooked that.

Dobre

[hddguy]

Have you tested the external HDD on a different Windows machine?