I have a Dell Inspiron Laptop with a 100GB hard drive. I got a Seagate Momentus 7200RPM 320GB drive to upgrade. I connected the new drive via USB and attempted to clone the drive via "EZ Gig II" software. I said to clone the drive identically (Dell has some recovery and config partitions), but with the one exeption that the main (bootable) partition be resized on the new drive to take up the remaining (~220gb) of extra space.

The cloning got about 14% through and had an error reading from one sector on the old drive. I hit ignore and it completed with no further errors. Upon completion, the new drive would not boot. I said "OK, time to try something else", and wiped the drive clean with SeaTools DOS. The only problem is now the new drive shows up as 100 GB (actually more like 93gb)!

I tried writing all zeros to the drive, but it only does so to the 93gb point and says completed. I then tried "Set Capacity To Max Native" in SeaTools and it fails! What is going on here? ANY help would be appreciated here!! Thanks!

Use MHDD to restore and clean your drive.
You can find it on this website.

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www.datarecoveryne.com

I already got MHDD going. First off, quick erase won't work for me no matter what, because it's always asking me to set a password. I have security turned off, so I don't know what the deal is there.

I tried to run NHPA to set the capacity to the native LBA and it fails. Device Error it says.

This drive still works btw. I tried loading Windows on it and it worked fine, with the exception that it's missing 220 GB .

Try to clone the drive with a desktop computer via the ide/sata channels. Cloning over usb gives me the creeps. Dell laptops also have a utility partition called DSR as the first partition on the drive. If it didnt get cloned over windows might not start. The DSR partition only starts windows when CTRL F11 is not pressed as the blue bar appears at the top of the screen. Your clone software probably skipped it.

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Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.

Find a program called "Bootit-NG" make the ISO following the instructions and boot with the CD.
Once you have booted the machine DO NOT INSTALL IT TO THE HARD DRIVE!
Look at the partition page and see if it will let you resize the partition. I just want to rule out the basics before we start going crazy.
Shawn

You can also try the Windows console from the cd to locate the windows partition. Search Google for BOOTFIX, FIXMBR, and BOOTCFG /REBUILD.

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Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.

Yeah but guys, I can look at the drive in Partition Magic, Windows Disk manager, SeaTools DOS (while connected to SATA, not USB) and it all comes up with the same number (~93gb).

I don't even care about getting the Dell clone to work now. I just want to wipe the drive clean and have 320gb of blank space (like a new drive). I thought that writing zeros to the drive and then "resetting the capacity" with SeaTools or MHDD would do this, but it fails...

Try "hdd capacity restore"; you can find it in this forum somewhere.

Best regards,

Dobre

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Murphy was an optimist

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

There is a possibility for SA errors, which prevents him to do resizing.

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www.datarecoveryne.com

respected friend
get ptdd software for free from net.
you may get a iso version too.
make a bootable ptdd partition table disk doctor.
run the soft ware , click on rebuilt partitions
it will rebuilt the previous partitions ... may take time some times but if there are no bad partition tables it does its job in three minutes.
close the soft ware . it will ask to reboot to apply changes.
reboot
you will recover the same size again
then see in partition magic , this magic works.. try it . i have always susceeded.

Pardon my ignorance, but what is a SA error?

No worries about ignorance but you should check out the newbie section in the Sticky/Important topics section. There is a topic in there that will answer this question.

http://forum.hddguru.com/newbie-info-from-and-for-newbies-about-firmware-etc-t6562.html

If it's asking for a password have you tried setting one? It could be a SA error. Did you move the drive while it was operating or anything? I can't see a SA error happening with a simple clone. So either some portion of the story is missing or you've got other issues.

I suggest setting a password. It seems like the security portion of the drive's SA has either been corrupted and that is what is causing the drive to believe that it is locked or it really has been locked. If the drive is locked then you cannot issue the hdd maximum size commands from any software until it is unlocked.

Just seems like something is missing in the info.

Thanks for the link magneto. That helps a lot to get my bearings on this down-and-dirty hard drive stuff.

I really am giving the full story here though. As I mentioned, the clone did error out at one point.

I tried to set a password using MHDD "FASTERASE" command but it always failed. When I probe the drive for information, it says

SECURITY: "High, OFF"

I don't know if that helps.

SA is Service Area. In basic words, it contains a lot of programms which operate the hdd. Errors could appear in that area, which will prevent you from doing some operations with a drive. Toi fix or check SA, you'll need special equipment.

First, try simple suggestions you got from others.

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www.datarecoveryne.com

The only thing you need is this: http://blog.atola.com/restoring-factory ... -capacity/
Attach the drive to a working PC as a secondary and run the tool.

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Dmitry

Master ,
Very Good .Hee Hee

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Regards
Amarbir S Dhillon , Chandigarh Data Recovery Labs [India]
Logical,Semi Physical And Physical Data Recovery
Website-> http://www.chandigarhdatarecovery.com

That is hard to do right now, as it is a laptop drive. I will have to see if I can get an adapter or something.

they cost U$15 dollars in fry's

Keep that new Seagate backed-up.

I haven't sold any 200's, but I think every 120 and under drive I sold came back.

Well, apparently SATA connectors on laptop drives are the exact same as those on desktop drives so I won't be needing an adapter. I don't have access to a desktop computer with SATA right now, so I can't try the Windows util, but I did get Hiren's Boot CD which has tons of HD utilities.

So far I ran:

-Partition Table Doctor and Rebuilt Partition Tables -----> Succeeded but didn't do anything for my problem
-MHDD and tried to run NHPA -----> Results: "FAIL, Try to repower HD"
-SeaTools DOS and tried to restore capacity -----> Result same as above
-Multiple other utitlies that allow resetting capacity. They have all failed with not explanation as to why.