Only 8GB seen of my 12GB harddisk

[Thomas]

Before you can create partitions, you have to change the drive type in HDToolbox. There is a button labelled "read configuration" which automatically fills in the fields of cylinders, heads and sectors. The values it entered for your HDD probably are 16383 cylinders, 16 heads and 63 sectors. This is the maximum for CHS type of addressing and it defines your HDD as being 7.8 GB.

You have to manually enter the real number of cylinders for a 12GB HDD. Theck the HDD's label or its manual if it says anything about the total number of blocks or the number of user sectors or the highest LBA (Logical Block Address). Divide this number by 16 (heads) and 63 (sectors). The result should be a whole number. This result is what you should enter as the number of cylinders.

I don't know of any program which can give you access to the remaining space once the drive type has been defined. You have to start all over again now, loosing all your partitions and already installed data.

It's not too difficult to write a program which hacks the real number of cylinders into the RDB, though.

Bye,
Thomas

[Thomas]

According to your statement it's not a 12GB drive at all?[/quote

Of course it is. It says 12 GB on the label, doesn't it ?

Go to http://www.hitachigst.com -> Support -> Technical Library and search the manual for your HDD. With 07N6635 I couldn't find any 12 GB drive, but you probably know better what the model number of your HDD is.

The document you need is called "OEM Specification". It's a rather big PDF document. One of the first chapters is "Drive Characteristics" with a sub-chapter of "Logical Drive Parameter". It contains a list with geometry data and among it the LBA which we need.

I found a 12 GB drive called Travelstar 12GN with a model number of DARA-212000 and it has 23,579,136 sectors. So the right geometry for that drive is

Heads = 16
Sectors (Blocks per Track) = 63
Cylinders = 23392

Bye,
Thomas