Dell d630 does not accurately recognize hard drive capacity

[bartidog]

I would like to install a 320gb WD SATA drive into a Dell D630, but both in BIOS and when I run the Windows install, the computer recognizes the drive at only 75gb. I've updated to latest BIOS, but no change in result. I've installed other, smaller drives into the unit and it recognizes/formats, etc without a problem. Is there an issue with recognizing larger capacity drives that is easy to fix?

Thanks!

 

[fzabkar]

What are the sizes of the drives you have successfully installed?

What is the history of the 320GB drive? How does a utility such as HD Sentinel detect it? How many LBAs/sectors does it report?

 

[profkefah]

ok upload an image from disk management
and bios hdd tab

 

[bartidog]

What are the sizes of the drives you have successfully installed?

What is the history of the 320GB drive? How does a utility such as HD Sentinel detect it? How many LBAs/sectors does it report?

The D630 is currently running perfectly on an 80gb drive, and I'm convinced it's an issue with the drive, not the D630.

The WD 320 drive was in an HP/Compaq 6910p and never had any problems. When I swapped the drive to the D630 to reformat and install Windows, etc, it just recognized 75gb. Since my post of last night, I used an adapter to connect the drive to my desktop and used computer management to view the properties of the drive. Sure enough, it shows partition as MBR, capacity of 74873mb.

 

[profkefah]

ok
in bios how many giga byte is show in hdd tab

 

[fzabkar]

If the BIOS only sees 75GB, then it looks like the drive may have been truncated. Some Dell laptops incorporate Media Direct which lives in a hidden partition on the drive. If you cloned an 80GB Dell drive to your 320GB drive, and then booted the 320GB drive, Dell's non-standard MBR code may have truncated your drive.

One solution would be to overwrite Dell's MBR code with standard Microsoft code (fdisk /mbr), and then restore the drive's full native capacity using a tool such as HDAT2.

See Q7(b):
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/HDD/HDD_Capacity_FAQ.html

 

[bartidog]

Thanks for the effort and input. I do appreciate it. I did run a Windows install repair to try to fix the master boot record, but still not working.

Best solution at this point -- I checked to see if the drive is still under warranty from Western Digital, and it is. I requested an RMA and boxed it up about an hour ago.

If it was out of warranty, I'd definitely keep trying, but I'm working on getting some Toughbook CF-29's and Gateway MA6's ready to sell.

Thanks again!

 

[fzabkar]

A "Windows install repair" will not restore the drive's native capacity.

 

[bartidog]

A "Windows install repair" will not restore the drive's native capacity.

Yes, I know. I just went into Recovery Console to run the 'fixmbr' command. Which, I then followed up with a complete wipe of the hard drive and attempted repair with HDD Capacity Restore program.

As I said, at this point, I've just got to move on and am happy to have a new drive under warranty. 😀