Roman Posted October 4, 2006 Share Posted October 4, 2006 HI all, Would anyone recommend a busy hardware forum whre I could ask a question about hard drive configuration? I need to make a ghosted hard disk show its actual capacity but can't fgure out how. Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
white90 Posted October 4, 2006 Share Posted October 4, 2006 http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=na...hardware+forums Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Humphreys Posted October 4, 2006 Share Posted October 4, 2006 Go into the BIOS and look there. Most PCs its press DEL as its booting up. Paul Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pugwash Posted October 4, 2006 Share Posted October 4, 2006 Would agree with Paul unless the HDD is set to autodetect- in my bios it won't actually list the size of the HDD if autodetect is on. you could just unscrew the case and have a look- it will say on the top of the harddrive- and if you can onle see the model number then post it up here and i'll decode it for you. before you open the case remember to remove your shoes and discharge yourself on a bare piece of earther metal- radiators are pretty good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roman Posted October 5, 2006 Author Share Posted October 5, 2006 Thanks, guys, The BIOS setting is AUTO, so it should not affect the readsings. The problem I am having is as follows: I have dumped a FAT32 60GB hard disk to a file sector by sector. Then I restored the file to another HDD but bigger - 80GB. Everything seems to be fine and I can boot the machine from the new disk under Win2kPro. The one snag remains that in Win2k PRO SP4 the new disk is reported by disk management tools as both 60Gb and 80Gb, depending which properties information panel is used. Even though the disk seems to be working fine this will, I suspect, lead to problems in the future. Is there a setting in the MBR and/or FAT that can be edited to correct the problem? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GBMUD Posted October 5, 2006 Share Posted October 5, 2006 Thanks, guys,The BIOS setting is AUTO, so it should not affect the readsings. The problem I am having is as follows: I have dumped a FAT32 60GB hard disk to a file sector by sector. Then I restored the file to another HDD but bigger - 80GB. Everything seems to be fine and I can boot the machine from the new disk under Win2kPro. The one snag remains that in Win2k PRO SP4 the new disk is reported by disk management tools as both 60Gb and 80Gb, depending which properties information panel is used. Even though the disk seems to be working fine this will, I suspect, lead to problems in the future. Is there a setting in the MBR and/or FAT that can be edited to correct the problem? You sound like you know much more than I do but, is the disk now appearing as an 80Gig disk with a 60Gig partition? Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pugwash Posted October 5, 2006 Share Posted October 5, 2006 You would need to clear the MBR i would have thought. Have you tried using a program like partition magic to see if the rest of the drive is logical? i would have thought that the situation you have at the moment is that the whole disk is logical at 80 but the MBR is reporting cylinders and sectors adding up to 60. did you set the sector sizes the same when you copied the file across? if you didn't then you might have all sorts of fun and games- lets say your old sectors were 4kb and your new sectors were in reality 5kb. You might now be only able to write 4kb to each sector rather than the full 5- which means you have lost 20% of your disk space. Does that make sense. Logically i guess what you need to work out is whether you have the same number of sectors are before (in which case you have a sector issue) or whether you have the same size sectors as before (which would have depended on your HDD format i think) but the MBR isn't reporting thbe extra available sectors. I used to use a program called Acronis back in the DOS days (and it has been a decade since i last used DOS- which is why some of my theorising above could be wrong- it's been a long time since i have had to think about things like this!) i've just found the updated suite whch allows you to do all sorts of thins like re-writing the MBR, checking the partitions and staes of any drives etc etc Acronis at Downloads.com woudl be interested in hearing how you got on. Have you thought that it might be quicker and cheaper to just add a new drive if you want the space? you can get big drives for peanuts nowadays! Probably cheaper and quicker than faffing around with curent problems that probably won't afect disk stability (if the computer doesn't know it can write to the hidden sectors then you won't have any problems!) also make sure that the BIOS doesn't have a switch to prevent access to the MBR- my Asus MB used to under advanced options. HTH Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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