32 GB limit of my 80 GB hard drive

fuyangchen · 03-04-2005, 03:38 PM

The problem is I cannot access the full capacity of my Seagate Barracuda ATA IV ST380021A 80 GB hard drive.

I used to use this drive in an old system. To access the whole capacity of the drive. I installed DDO (Dynamic Drive Overlay) on the drive (using Seagate Disk Manager 9.56a).

Now I moved this drive to a new system, which uses Celeron 1.7 GHz, 256MB and MSI motherboard with Intel 845G chipset on the board, the BIOS date (version) is 2003. I have already installed a Western Digital 120 GB hard drive in the system. The motherboard has no problem to recognize the size of 120 GB drive. I tried to use Seagate drive as a slave drive in the new system, the DDO has been uninstalled already by the same version of Seagate Disk Manager 9.56a, and the 32 GB limit jumper has been removed. But the size reported by BIOS is 33820 MB. I took out the 120 GB drive from the computer, then use Seagate drive only in the computer, the size is still 33820 MB.

I use Seagate DM 9.56a (or Dos-based Seagate Diskwizard Starter, I call it DS)) to boot the computer, when DM (DS) was successfully loaded, I exited DM (DS), then restarted (ctrl-alt-del or reset) the computer, the computer can recognize the size of the drive. But if I turn off the computer, start it again, the size BIOS recognized become 33820 MB again.

I am sure DDO was not loaded during the test because I didn't load it and I cannot see the blue loading screen. I deleted all partitions in this drive and zero filled (fast) the drive, I got the same result. It seems Disk Manager or Diskwizard affect the size recognition of BIOS. Another thing I can confirm is the 32 GB limit jumper was not installed, I just put the cable select jumpers on both of my drives, and use 80-conductor hard drive cable (Ultra ATA?)

If I load DDO on the drive I have no problem to access full capability of the drive, but I don't want to do so, since I want use this drive in an external hard drive enclosure.

So my questions are:

1. How do I use full capacity of this hard drive without loading DDO?
2. Does DM/DS act as BIOS if I use them to boot the system?

Thanks for your reply!

**johnwill** · 03-04-2005, 05:58 PM

If you remove the capacity limitation jumper and use something like DBAN to totally blank the drive, it should be fully recognized.

You might try something as simple as installing the drive as the only drive in the system, booting with an MS-DOS startup disk, and typing FDISK /MBR. This usually kills drive overlay software, in case what you did wasn't getting it.

fuyangchen · 03-04-2005, 11:46 PM

Thanks, Johnwill

I received reply from Seagate technical support:

1. How do I use full capacity of this hard drive without loading DDO?
UPGRADE THE BIOS AND TRY TO USE THE SET DRIVE SIZE Option on the Utilities option for the DiscWizard。

2. Does DM/DS act as BIOS if I use them to boot the system?
NO, they are acting as a patch on your BIOS but they do not replace the BIOS.

I solve the problem by USing THE SET DRIVE SIZE Option on the Utilities option for the DiscWizard

**johnwill** · 03-05-2005, 10:14 AM

Glad to see you got it sorted out. I didn't realize they actually limited capacity in the firmware, I thought it was just a jumper. Of course, I've never tried to limit the capacity of any of my drives, why would I want to do that!

whatfor · 04-28-2009, 01:32 PM

I had the same problem, finally I found a solution, it was due to jumper setting on my old ata disk.