Hey guys,

I'd really appreciate some help. I'm trying to figure out what the best way to determine whether or not a hard drive has an HPA or a DCO. It appears, essentially impossible from what I can tell, to determine this information through a Windows or DOS environment. I guess that's because Windows obtains all it's information on the hard drive from the HD's BIOS "Identify" command?

I know that in Linux, you can tell immediately what the max sectors are on a hard drive (when formatting, or setting up a raid or whatever) because Linux uses the READ_MAX_ADDRESS command. However, I'd really like to be able to get this information from within Windows.

I am really at a loss here. Is there ANY WAY to determine if a hard drive has an HPA or a DCO from a Windows environment, without having to take it on a case by case basis (IE: looking up the hard drive on the internet, and then comparing what is getting displayed in Windows).

Any help would really be appreciated. I've tried downloading dozens and dozens of tools, but nothing actually will tell me, even when it says it will. All the tools seem to exist for Linux, but none for Windows best I can figure.


Thanks!!!

FYI, it's not impossible when using DOS - for example MHDD or HDAT2 can be used.

I don't remember a Windows program which can do this, but perhaps another member will remember one. As you say, this is easy to see in Linux.

(P.S. Have you investigated Victoria for Windows? I don't have a chance to try it at the moment, but that's one that I would check, if I was the person asking your question )