Hard Drive size error?

Manufan63 · 01-25-2009, 04:38 AM

Bear with me! I have a 500Gb external Maxtor hard drive which until recently was running perfectly. My computer rebooted yesterday after an update whilst my son was still connected to the drive via my home network. On rebooting all I could get was a 'The drive is not formatted....' message.

After looking at the drive with Partition Magic I found some cross match errors, whatever they are, but PM couldn't fix. I tried rebuilding the partition table with Partition Table Doctor which was successful, but the drive still showed errors and I could only see a partition of 1.7GB. After rebooting and looking again with PM, I could now see the original partition of 467GB, but with an un-partitioned space next to it of 1.2TB!

I converted this space to a primary partition, merged the two partitions into one partition of 1.6TB. I then formatted the drive within Windows (which took hours), and now it appears as a drive with the capacity of 1.6TB which incidently is working fine.

How can this be? Is windows just reading the size incorrectly? Will I get the 'Drive full' message after 467GB? Or have I stumbled on a trade secret that all hard drives are the same but just limited by the manufacturer

**raptor_pa** · 01-25-2009, 08:05 AM

I doubt you will get the drive full message, probably some more nasty error. Since it sounds like the data is not an issue, I would repartition with Windows ( not PM ) and see what the reported size is. You are correct that all drives are a bit bigger than the reported size, this allows for remapping sectors as they fail, however these spare sectors or not 4 times the capacity LOL, perhaps an extra 1000 or so. Whatyou have now is an unstable drive with an invalid geometry for Windows to use refer to, eventually this wil cause issues

Manufan63 · 01-25-2009, 09:52 AM

Thanks, I'm in the process of repartitioning now. Will post the results later.

01-25-2009, 04:38 AM	#1 (permalink)
Manufan63 Registered User Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 2 OS: XP sp3	Hard Drive size error? Bear with me! I have a 500Gb external Maxtor hard drive which until recently was running perfectly. My computer rebooted yesterday after an update whilst my son was still connected to the drive via my home network. On rebooting all I could get was a 'The drive is not formatted....' message. After looking at the drive with Partition Magic I found some cross match errors, whatever they are, but PM couldn't fix. I tried rebuilding the partition table with Partition Table Doctor which was successful, but the drive still showed errors and I could only see a partition of 1.7GB. After rebooting and looking again with PM, I could now see the original partition of 467GB, but with an un-partitioned space next to it of 1.2TB! I converted this space to a primary partition, merged the two partitions into one partition of 1.6TB. I then formatted the drive within Windows (which took hours), and now it appears as a drive with the capacity of 1.6TB which incidently is working fine. How can this be? Is windows just reading the size incorrectly? Will I get the 'Drive full' message after 467GB? Or have I stumbled on a trade secret that all hard drives are the same but just limited by the manufacturer

01-25-2009, 08:05 AM	#2 (permalink)
raptor_pa Mod Hardware Team Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Central PA Posts: 4,819 OS: XP	Re: Hard Drive size error? I doubt you will get the drive full message, probably some more nasty error. Since it sounds like the data is not an issue, I would repartition with Windows ( not PM ) and see what the reported size is. You are correct that all drives are a bit bigger than the reported size, this allows for remapping sectors as they fail, however these spare sectors or not 4 times the capacity LOL, perhaps an extra 1000 or so. Whatyou have now is an unstable drive with an invalid geometry for Windows to use refer to, eventually this wil cause issues __________________

01-25-2009, 09:52 AM	#3 (permalink)
Manufan63 Registered User Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 2 OS: XP sp3	Re: Hard Drive size error? Thanks, I'm in the process of repartitioning now. Will post the results later.