Re: Samsung hdd problem

On Tue, 21 Mar 2006 05:23:44 GMT, Paul wrote:

In article <d_GTf.73575$fe6.71917@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, no@xxxxxxxxxxxx
(andrei.husar) wrote:

i got a samsung SV0411N hdd, and the problem is that it only sees 5 gb
from 40. I've tryed everything I know and any of my friends know. do
not know what to do with it. could use some help, cause i do not want
to throw it away. the last thing that i can do is to find out the
exact number of cylinders, numbers of heads, and everything else, to
fix it from BIOS. help please

I've had a Maxtor drive failure, where the controller claimed the
disk was 10GB, when it was actually 40GB. It was a symptom that
the controller could no longer get critical information from the
platters, implying a serious problem.

There are certain "magic" size limits, that have occurred as drive
capacities have grown over the years. The 5GB number does not
ring any bells, and this sound more like the controller cannot
tell how many platters it has any more. This article lists
some of the "magic" sizes:

http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/linux/Large-Disk-4.html

Paul

I just put a new WD 80GB hard drive in an older system. The BIOS reported
the size as 14GB. The hard drive is fine and with the WD DataLifeguard
Overlay, the drive is reported correctly in the OS as 80GB. Why did the
BIOS choose 14GB? Since there is no 14GB "magic" size limit, it may be
picking up some kind of cylinder/head reading from the hard drive, and
being confused is reporting what it thinks it should be with those
readings. That's all I can figure. We've determined that the BIOS more
than likely has a limitation of 32GB, but I don't think that it means that
it will report every hard drive over 32GB as that amount. You can use an
alternate jumper setting on most drives to force it to read 32GB, which is
why I think that have that jumper setting available.

Patty
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Samsung hdd problem
    ... fix it from BIOS. ... I've had a Maxtor drive failure, where the controller claimed the ... As hard drives get larger, ... you had said it was the BIOS that was reporting the size error, ...
    (alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt)
  • Re: NForce2 pseudoscience stability testing (2.6.0-test11)
    ... doesn˙t the kernel get to ... Bios revision? ... 00:00.0 Host bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce2 AGP ... 00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 USB Controller (rev ...
    (Linux-Kernel)
  • Re: SIL 3112a Controller Issues....
    ... I'm still kind of thinking that the Intel controller _should_ be OK given my ... There are known issues with the earlier nvidea chip that uses Active ... The mainboard BIOS is the latest and the SIL BIOS (that's integrated into ... A SIL3112 on a motherboard, is handled a bit differently than a SIL3112 ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • [PATCH 2.4] decrypt/update ide help entries
    ... This add-on card is a bootable PCI UDMA controller. ... happen if the BIOS revisions of all installed cards do ... Promise FastTrak LP/TX2/TX4 ...
    (Linux-Kernel)
  • RE: Can FreeBSD safely use a (un-booted from) drive that is invisible to the BIOS?
    ... ata controler but have HD on wrong ribbon nipple to match master ... ad0 is the boot drive. ... It is recognized by the BIOS, obviously, ... ad2 is the only device on the second controller and it is definitely ...
    (freebsd-questions)