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Harddrive issue

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Hello, Hardware help, Am I doing something wrong here?
I recently purchased a USED Western Digital HDD, model WD400BB-60DGA0. I believe this is a 40GB drive am I correct? I am using an MSI K7N2 Delta Motherboard with an AMD Athlon XP 1700 CPU. While trying to do a fresh new install of the OS (Win2Kpro) in the Standard CMOS Features the harddrive is showing up as the correct model but after doing the IDE HDD Auto-Detection the Capacity is listed as 10050MB. Does anyone know why the full capacity is not showing up and is there something I can do to get the full capacity of the drive? Any help will be appreciated.

Thank You:
wlangley

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Reply To: Harddrive issue

In reply to Harddrive issue

Yes, the WD 400BB is a 40GB 7200 rpm drive with 2MB cache.

I have seen drive sizes mis-reported several times. In most cases, data would be correct when drive was connected to one system but not to another. Other drives would report correctly, so tend to believe it’s not a BIOS problem but related to firmware on drive.

First step is to run Western Digital Diagnostics on the drive and ensure that it is operating properly. You may need to connect drive to another PC for diagnostics to function correctly.

Here’s link to WD Diagnostics.

http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp?swid=1

File creates a bootable floppy with diagnostics.

Dalton

Reply To: Harddrive issue

In reply to Reply To: Harddrive issue

Use WD diagnostics to reset drive to factory condition. Involves writing 1’s to entire drive surface if I remember correctly. This sometimes works wonders.

Reply To: Harddrive issue

In reply to Reply To: Harddrive issue

Also connect suspect drive to another PC and see what happens.

Reply To: Harddrive issue

In reply to Harddrive issue

Hi, and Thanks for the reply.

I connected two other HDD’s, first was a 20GB, second was a 80GB on this very same machine and the their Capacity listed correct both were Western Digital. The jumpers are set on cable select. I also ran a Western digital diagnostics quick test which stated the capacity as 10.0G but it tested without errors, error/status code: 0000. I have never seen a factory HDD mislabeled, is this possible, don’t they check the capacity before shipping? Any ideas on what to do next?

Thanks,
Bill

Reply To: Harddrive issue

In reply to Harddrive issue

You might also try resetting the jumper to either Master or Slave. If the cables aren’t just right you can see this with the Cable Select setting.

Reply To: Harddrive issue

In reply to Harddrive issue

Thank You, to all that replied:
I greatly appreciate the comments and I tried them all but the drive stills reads as a 10GB.Yes, according to the label this is the WD 400BB it is a 40GB @ 7200 rpm drive with 2MB cache.
I decided that I have put to much time into this drive already plus no working machine,thus I returned it to the shop of purchase. The owner did his test and came up with the same result. A New drive was purchased, WD120JB for for $90 with full credit on the old one. Hope the the label is correct on this one LOL.
Thanks Again to all,
wlangley

Reply To: Harddrive issue

In reply to Harddrive issue

Sounds like a monday/friday HD. Someone did not get the connections to the heads soldered right ! (ie: 4 heads – 3 not working = 10G).

BTW – You need to award the points to close out the question, give them to the ones that answered before you resolved the issue.

Funky Hard Drive Size!

In reply to Reply To: Harddrive issue

I just recently acquired the same model of hard drive, and it too was showing up as only having 10GB of space. I have done a lot of research and have found out that WD changes the firmware on the drives on purpose. These drives are replacement drives for older HP/Compaq systems that originally had a 10 or 15 GB drive in when they were new. So now I’m trying to find out if someone out there has managed to find a way to update the firmware on the drive with one that will allow the full capacity to shine forth!

Take care guys!

[Author]

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