200GB HD, but only 136GB visible?!?!

nurbz

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Hi guys,

I bought a second SATA HD for my computer, but the computer does not see its full capacity. Although it is 200GB, the BIOS reports it is only 136GB, and hence so does Windows?!?! It awfully sounds like the old big hard drive problem, whereby older hardware/OS could not see the full capacity of a HD. But my first HD is 160GB, and is working just fine! I am using XP with SP2, with a brand new GIGABYTE motherboard. I really cannot see where the problem could come from? Any ideas/suggestions/advices will be most appreciated.

Many thanks in advance

Alex
 

nurbz

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I think I found the problem. I found on the giga-byte FAQ for my mobo (K8N SLI)
"Why can't I enter WinXP after installing nvidia chipset driver when use with some Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 SATAII hard disk ?
Please update Seagate harddisk firmware from 2AAA to 3AAE will fix this issue."
While searching on the web, it seems to be a more or less common problem. Essentially, the firmware of the HD is very buggy, so it creates probllem like mine (not full capacity) or access time slowdown (reading slower than writing). One solution would be to update the firmware, but Seagate do not provide them. Or you can also limit the drive to SATA150, but it kind of defeats the purpose of having a fast HD.

In other words, stay away from Seagate 7200.9 SATA drives!!!!!! Don't buy them. Mine is already on its way back to the retailer.

I hope that will help other guys with the same problem.

Thanks again,

Alex
 

Bluefinger

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I think I found the problem. I found on the giga-byte FAQ for my mobo (K8N SLI)
"Why can't I enter WinXP after installing nvidia chipset driver when use with some Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 SATAII hard disk ?
Please update Seagate harddisk firmware from 2AAA to 3AAE will fix this issue."
While searching on the web, it seems to be a more or less common problem. Essentially, the firmware of the HD is very buggy, so it creates probllem like mine (not full capacity) or access time slowdown (reading slower than writing). One solution would be to update the firmware, but Seagate do not provide them. Or you can also limit the drive to SATA150, but it kind of defeats the purpose of having a fast HD.

In other words, stay away from Seagate 7200.9 SATA drives!!!!!! Don't buy them. Mine is already on its way back to the retailer.

I hope that will help other guys with the same problem.

Thanks again,

Alex

Eh?? I have a Seagate 7200.9 SATA II drive... and its not at all faulty/crap. At least it works... unlike my original Western Digital HDD, which I had to replace due to it dying within three days of installing it into the system. The guy above could have just got a HDD from a faulty batch or something.
 

nurbz

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That seems like a fairly common problem, frequently mentioned on the web. Gigabyte even warns against it on their website!
 

Bluefinger

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Hmmm... strange then. Oh well, at least Seagate have 7200.10 HDDs now, so probably that problem should have been rectified in this new range of HDDs.
 

Codesmith

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---
CUT AND PASTED Binary vs Metric Prefix Rant
---

300 billion bytes = 300 GB* = 279 GB** = 279 GiB.

G sometimes means one billion(*) and sometime means 1024^3(**).

The 2nd meaning of G is more correctly written as Gi, but few people bother.

The standard scientific convention is to use the metric prefixes for measuring transfer rates and only use binary prefixes for storage capacity.

That worked until Quatum decided to cheat and switch from binary to metric when measuring hard drives, all the other hard drive manufacturers quickly followed suit.

The actual usage is as follows. (Bold indicate where common usage actually agrees which scientific convention)

ISP reported bandwidth , HDs , DVDs, most benchmarks = metric prefixes
Memory, CDs , browser reported bandwidth = binary prefixes
---
 

jjw

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I'm glad you know the conversion between Gi and GB (did I get that right?)

But there is still a discrepency in his capacity. Doing the math...

200GB=186GiB

This does not come close to his reported capacity of 136G(i)B from the bios. What units does the bios report?

I am curious about the problems with the seagate 7200.x drives? I have a pair of 7200.8 drives in a raid array that I have never been happy with the transfer rates on...
 

nurbz

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The problem corresponds to the well-known 137GB barrier.

And the problem with the Seagate 7200.9 HD comes from their buggy firmware from what I understood. However, concerning your RAID array, there are so many other factors that might play a role. But true, the 7200.9 are also slow at reading, slower than for writing actually!
 

linux_0

Splendid
The problem corresponds to the well-known 137GB barrier.

And the problem with the Seagate 7200.9 HD comes from their buggy firmware from what I understood. However, concerning your RAID array, there are so many other factors that might play a role. But true, the 7200.9 are also slow at reading, slower than for writing actually!


Do you have a source for that?

This seems to contradict that:

http://www.storagereview.com/php/benchmark/bench_sort.php

Some recent Seagate drives have had severe problems especially some 7200.8 models.


[code:1:44f93566a4]
Rank Drive Name Model Results in MB/Sec
1 Maxtor Atlas 15K II (147 GB Ultra320 SCSI) 8E147L0 97.4
2 Fujitsu MAU (147 GB Ultra320 SCSI) MAU3147NP 93.8
3 Seagate Cheetah 15K.4 Server Mode (147 GB SAS) ST3146854SS 93.4
4 Hitachi Ultrastar 15K147 (147 GB Ultra320 SCSI) HUS151414VL3600 93.2
5 Seagate Cheetah 15K.4 Server Mode (147 GB Ultra320 SCSI) ST3146754LW 93.2
6 Seagate Cheetah 15K.4 Desktop Mode (147 GB Ultra320 SCSI) ST3146754LW 93.2
7 Maxtor Atlas 10K V (300 GB Ultra320 SCSI) 8D300L0 89.5
8 Fujitsu MAT (300 GB Ultra320 SCSI) MAT3300NP 88.5
9 Western Digital Raptor WD1500ADFD with NCQ (150 GB SATA) WD1500ADFD-00NLR0 88.3
10 Western Digital Raptor WD1500ADFD no NCQ (150 GB SATA) WD1500ADFD-00NLR0 88.3
11 Western Digital Raptor X WD1500AHFD with NCQ (150 GB SATA) WD1500AHFD-00RAR0 87.3
12 Western Digital Raptor X WD1500AHFD no NCQ (150 GB SATA) WD1500AHFD-00RAR0 87.3
13 Hitachi Ultrastar 10K300 (300 GB Ultra320 SCSI) HUS103030FL3600 86.3
14 Seagate Cheetah 10K.7 Desktop Mode (300 GB Ultra320 SCSI) ST3300007LW 76.5
15 Seagate Cheetah 10K.7 Server Mode (300 GB Ultra320 SCSI) ST3300007LW 76.5
16 Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 no NCQ (160 GB SATA) ST3160812AS 72.7
17 Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 with NCQ (160 GB SATA) ST3160812AS 72.7
18 Seagate NL35 no NCQ (400 GB SATA) ST3400832NS 71.9
19 Seagate NL35 with NCQ (400 GB SATA) ST3400832NS 71.9
20 Western Digital Raptor WD740GD-00FLA1 with TCQ (74 GB SATA) WD740GD 71.8
21 Western Digital Raptor WD740GD-00FLA1 no TCQ (74 GB SATA) WD740GD 71.8
22 Western Digital Raptor WD740GD-00FLC0 no TCQ (74 GB SATA) WD740GD 71.8
23 Western Digital Raptor WD740GD-00FLC0 with TCQ (74 GB SATA) WD740GD 71.8
24 Samsung SpinPoint P120 no NCQ (250 GB SATA) SP2504C 71.3
25 Samsung SpinPoint P120 with NCQ (250 GB SATA) SP2504C 71.3
26 Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 no NCQ (400 GB SATA) ST3400832AS 69.8
27 Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 with NCQ (400 GB SATA) ST3400832AS 69.8
28 Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 no NCQ (250 GB SATA) ST3250824AS 67.8
[/code:1:44f93566a4]
 

elpresidente2075

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May 29, 2006
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I'm glad you know the conversion between Gi and GB (did I get that right?)

But there is still a discrepency in his capacity. Doing the math...

200GB=186GiB

This does not come close to his reported capacity of 136G(i)B from the bios. What units does the bios report?

I am curious about the problems with the seagate 7200.x drives? I have a pair of 7200.8 drives in a raid array that I have never been happy with the transfer rates on...

I believe that at least most of that discrepancy will be from the formatting, but I could be mistaken.
 

linux_0

Splendid
I'm glad you know the conversion between Gi and GB (did I get that right?)

But there is still a discrepency in his capacity. Doing the math...

200GB=186GiB

This does not come close to his reported capacity of 136G(i)B from the bios. What units does the bios report?

I am curious about the problems with the seagate 7200.x drives? I have a pair of 7200.8 drives in a raid array that I have never been happy with the transfer rates on...

I believe that at least most of that discrepancy will be from the formatting, but I could be mistaken.



Indeed but it couldn't account for 136GiB.

186GiB or a bit less I could understand.

It sounds like a possible system or HDD BIOS problem.