[xorange90x]

I have a 160gb Seagate Momentus that i have Windows 10 currently installed on. Its only reported as about 38gb though. I've checked in Storage Management and there is no Unallocated space. Ive also ran datav recovery and partition tools to seek out lost or hidden partitions, but nothing was found or recovered. All of the utilities report the drive as being 38gb. The hard drive works perfectly fine other than this.

What can i do to get the full capacity back? I don't mind formatting the drive. The data is not important.

 

[NeoReaper]

In CMD, run "diskpart" and then "list disk". Does that still say 38gb?

 

[xorange90x]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NeoReaper

In CMD, run "diskpart" and then "list disk". Does that still say 38gb?

Yes, i just checked and LIST DISK reports it at 37gb (my mistake, i thought it was 38gb when i was messing with it last night.)

 

[Lord Xeb]

Your drive has failed bud. Is there anything important on it?

 

[xorange90x]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lord Xeb

Your drive has failed bud. Is there anything important on it?

No, nothing important at all. The 37gb is partitioned and runs Windows 10 very well. What would cause it to fail, but still be partly usable?

 

[Lord Xeb]

I am surprised it is even working. Either way I would recommend replacing that drive.

 

[parityboy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by xorange90x

No, nothing important at all. The 37gb is partitioned and runs Windows 10 very well. What would cause it to fail, but still be partly usable?

It sounds like something in the drive's firmware (or more properly, nvram) is corrupted. It certainly doesn't sound mechanical.

 

[xorange90x]

Quote:

Originally Posted by parityboy

It sounds like something in the drive's firmware (or more properly, nvram) is corrupted. It certainly doesn't sound mechanical.

Yea i am reluctant to call it a mechanical failure.. It doesn't act out of the ordinary or make any sort of noises. If it were in fact firmware would i be able to reflash it or update it? I've never messed with firmware on a hard drive before.

Thanks for your reply.

 

[parityboy]

@OP

If you could find compatible firmware for that drive and its specific board revision, it would work. Having reviewed my "nvram" comment earlier, I am more of the opinion that the drive's capacity is in fact hard coded in the firmware rather than being dynamically discovered.

 

[xorange90x]

Quote:

Originally Posted by parityboy

@OP

If you could find compatible firmware for that drive and its specific board revision, it would work. Having reviewed my "nvram" comment earlier, I am more of the opinion that the drive's capacity is in fact hard coded in the firmware rather than being dynamically discovered.

I checked for firmware updates but none are available. After a little more reading up i am thinking that the capacity has been set by software. I think i may need to restore the factory capacity through DOS. There are tools available, and i suppose i will give them a shot when i get the time.

 

[Blameless]

You can often edit capacity in the drive's firmware (via software tools) or the legacy geometry in the board's BIOS settings.

Not familiar with Seagate's tools for this, but it looks like you're on the right track.

 

[parityboy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blameless

You can often edit capacity in the drive's firmware (via software tools) or the legacy geometry in the board's BIOS settings.

Not familiar with Seagate's tools for this, but it looks like you're on the right track.

I see what you did there!

 

[gonX]

I'd check PassMark DiskCheckup if HPA or DCO has been enabled:

 

[xorange90x]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gonX

I'd check PassMark DiskCheckup if HPA or DCO has been enabled:

In an interesting turn of events, i now have full capacity available to me.. By doing absolutely nothing at that! I plugged the drive back in and opened DiskCheckup.. Right away i noticed under the drive details it says Capacity 149.05GB. So i went to Disk Management and sure enough, there was sitting 111GB of Unallocated space. I created a new Simple Volume without any trouble, but then deleted it and just extended my main partition to full capacity.

This is very strange because that Unallocated space never showed up in Disk Management before. Even when i tried the lost/hidden partition utilities they always reported the drive as ~40GB capacity.

However, under the SMART tab in DiskCheckup it has a FAIL for End-to-End.. I'm guessing that out of freak incident, when i plugged the drive in this time, it was somehow able to detect the missing space. I think maybe the End-to-End SMART fail is the culprit and i could quite possibly lose all of that space again at any given moment.