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From: Odie Ferrous on 3 Apr 2008 16:16
Folkert Rienstra wrote:
>
> Rod Speed wrote in news:65i3otF2g2ch2U1(a)mid.individual.net
> > Peter Lu <swift(a)TheWorld.com> wrote
> > > Rod Speed <rod.speed.aaa(a)gmail.com> wrote
> >
> > > > Try wiping the drive with clearhdd
> > > > http://files.filefront.com/ClearHDDrar/;5300442;/fileinfo.html
> > > > If that doesnt work, try Hitachi's Drive Feature Tool.
> >
> > > Hi, thanks so much for the advice. I tried clearhdd
> > > and it did nothing. However, Feature Tool managed
> > > to fix the drive, so indeed it was short-stroked.
> >
> > > But, while trying to set up for re-imaging my drive
> > > (from the old drive), it got short-stroked again,
> > > probably by Windows boot-up software.
> >
> > That last shouldnt be possible.
> >
> > > So, I'm very concerned that a drive would be corrupted so easily.
> >
> > Yeah, but I dont believe that Windows boot-up software
> > does that, it must be something else like a defective drive.
> >
> > > While I wait for the replacement drive,
> >
> > Yeah, thats what I'd do, replace it.
> >
> > > I'm trying to install Windows, etc., on the "defective"
> > > drive just to characterize its failing behavior.
> >
> > Yeah, it would be interesting to see what produces that short stroking.
> >
> > > > Yes. Drives can be short stroked, appear to be smaller than they actually
> > > > are.
> >
> > > How and why is this done?
>
> > Its done when a drive is replaced under warranty,
>
> Nope.
>
> > when the manufacturer no longer has any stock of the drive being replaced.
> > So they supply a more recent bigger drive and short stroke it so
> > that the end user gets just the drive size they paid for.
>
> That doesn't work as it's easily undone.

Nonsense. It's easy enough for some people (such as myself, for
instance, or the manufacturer themselves) to disable one or more
read/write heads, thus reducing the capacity.

It's fairly well-known in the industry that at one point,
smaller-capacity drives were being sold to "third" world countries at a
correspondingly lower price - but they were identical in every single
way to drives twice the capacity - they just had a read/write head
disabled.

It's all marketing dross.

Quite honestly, Folkert, I would have thought you would know better.



Duncan
--
Retrodata
www.retrodata.co.uk
Globally Local Data Recovery Experts
From: Franc Zabkar on 4 Apr 2008 19:03
On Tue, 1 Apr 2008 07:03:25 +0000 (UTC), swift(a)TheWorld.com (Peter Lu)
put finger to keyboard and composed:

>I bought a WD2500BEVE drive (Western Digital 250GB 2.5"
>IDE) to upgrade my Dell laptop and somehow in the process
>of partitioning, formatting and Windows OS migration, its
>geometry got corrupted and instead of being a 250GB drive,
>it is now a 78GB drive. The corruption is on the drive
>itself, as the 78GB shows in PC BIOS, with Knoppix Linux,
>when the drive is put in a USB enclosure, and in WD's
>Data Lifeguard Diagnostics. Other people have
>successfully installed this drive on the model of my
>laptop, so IDE controller features such as 48-bit
>addressing should not be any issue.
>
>WD DLG Diagnostics shows the CHS as 152139/16/63 when the
>drive should be about 484402/16/63.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Host_Protected_Area

Host Protected Area sometimes referred to as Hidden Protected Area is
an area of a hard drive that is not normally visible to an operating
system (OS).

Creating and manipulating HPA on a hard drive can be achieved by a
number of tools.

HDAT2 by Lubomir Cabla.
setmax by Andries E. Brouwer
DiscWizard Starter Edition by Seagate Technologies.
Feature Tool by Hitachi Global Storage Technologies.

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.
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