strange problem with HDD

I you would format a harddrive, you would then create 1 partition as big as the drive itself. But the BIOS just says that the capacity of the device itself is 33 GB. That pc is at my grandparents house. I'll go there monday, and connect the other drive to the secondary IDE controller. Maybe those 2 harddisks on 1 IDE controller might be the problem. When I had the full 80 GB capacity on the old mainboard, I didn't had the other harddisk connected. That might be the problem.

 

Unplug all other IDE devices except for the supposed 33Gb drive. You said it was a western digital right? Remove all the jumpers, see if it detects.

 

okay, I will do that.

 

Also Read ATA Jumper Settings small article from Seagate. Its all about setting jumpers but it has one setting for the same thing u r talking about as well...

 

I searched on google for information about that 2nd harddrive. That one is a seagate. It has to be set as Slave in this set-up. So all I have to do I check that all jumpers on that drive are removed. And the jumper on the 80 GB drive has to be set as Master (jumper completely to the left). I'll do this today.

 

It didn't work. All jumpers where correct. I even disconnected all other drives, and only that harddrive connected. Still nothing. I even tried another power supply, still nothing. Then I downloaded the program Maxblast to partition Maxtor drives, but that one freezes while booting up. i've attached 2 screenshots, 1 of the BIOS information of the HDD, and 1 about that program from maxtor that freezes. I've sent the same information to the technical support of Maxtor. (btw I made these pics with my phone)

 

Have you updated your bios?

 

............................

 

I can only think that the HDD is either 33GB, or that it is faulty, i have never known a problem like this before.

 

I've ran the disc scanner Powermax from maxtor in multiple modes. None of them can find any errors. The label sticker on the harddisk has the text: Capacicy 80 GB. But I contacted the techical support of Maxtor. They say that I need to use the option low-level format from the program PowerMAX. I'll go back to the pc tomorrow. Hope to solve it then.

 

Maxtor is hell, gotta use there own software to format the drive which seems abit stupid :\.

 

Yes it does. But maybe the drive was formatted on the wrong way, and now that format program from Maxtor needs to fix it to the correct size. I don't think it will help much, but I'm out of ideas. So trying to use that program won't do any more damage

 

If it doesent help, i would reccommend taking it back to the store, getting a refund, and buying another HDD that aint a Maxtor

 

But the harddisk is removed from its anti-static package. Can it still be refunded?

 

I think as long as u have the receipt of the HDD you can replace it...Unless u opened up some Seals stickers which says warranty will be void if removed..lol

 

You can return a drive if it is removed from the anti-static package.

 

Ok, thanks for the advice.

 

What brand of harddisk would be a good one?

 

Western Digital, Seagate, Samsung.

I have a samsung 160Gb HDD and a Western Digital 250Gb HDD, the Samsung is around 2 years old now and has never had problems, same goes for the Western Digital

 

ok, thanks