Comments on: Restoring Factory Hard Drive Capacity

By: John Woods

John Woods — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 19:58:02 +0000

Solved my problem with SATA drive with an adapter from Addonics in San Jose, CA. Replaced my ATAPI DVD drive with this combination and the drive was recognized. After running the repair routine it reported an error with the drive so I restored my system to normal, very disappointed.

However, when I checked the drive on a USB-SATA adapter, the program had done its job, my 250GB drive was restored to its full capacity.

Thank tou!!!!

By: kevin

kevin — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 05:40:58 +0000

Just bought a new computer, got os on it, started copying my files and to my suprise the hdd got full. its a seagate 250 but only shows 127. i have service pack 3 on both my computers, and i tried taking the hdd out and putting it in my other comp, and using this software. it says the hdd is already at factory 250 capacity, and after i ran the software the drive dissapared from ‘my computer’. if i reboot it shows up again but still at 127gig.

By: Tony_c

Tony_c — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 06:56:13 +0000

Wow, Just wanted to pop in and say thanks for the tool, worked 100% and 100% easy to use.

Also great job with the on going support on this page, that is just amazing and rare to see, Thanks guys n Girls!

By: Dmitry Postrigan

Dmitry Postrigan — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 01:00:47 +0000

zaher: The tool is safe to the data, however, we make no guarantees - it is always wise to have a backup.

By: zaher

zaher — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 10:28:56 +0000

if i use the tool will i lose my data on hdd??

By: John Woods

John Woods — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 02:15:46 +0000

When I found your software I thought that my dreams had been answered.

However, after trying this on 4 different machines,(3 desktops and a laptop) it only seems to recognize EIDE drives, not the SATA that I want to repair.

Am I doing something wrong or is there a newer version of the software?

My primary machine uses Intel ICHR8f AHCI drivers.

By: Dmitry Postrigan

Dmitry Postrigan — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 18:13:59 +0000

czer27:
It is possible that you have a file system or partition corruption on that hard drive, and that corruption prevents Windows from unmounting it. You can fix that by either fixing those file systems/partitions (for example, with chkdsk) or deleting all partitions from that hard drive.

By: czer27

czer27 — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:46:40 +0000

Hi Dimitry,

in addition to my first reply:
Today I´ve tried run HDD Capacity Restore on another PC, to restore my boot drive. But it was the same procedure as before:

First Vista installs the standard volume and the driver for my WD1200JB HDD. After restarting OS I started the HDD Capacity Restore, choose the WD1200JB (Master on SEK IDE) and run the tool. After a short time came a pop up window: Device is currently in use and cannot be removed from the system. Please remove it manually in the Device Manager and try it again. Device Manager says: You must restart. After restart the first action is to new install the drive.
This seems to be a general failure of the program.

By: Dr. Klahn

Dr. Klahn — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 17:50:23 +0000

Thank you, Dmitry. I’ve reformatted more IDE drives than I can remember, and I never knew that capacity reduction is a drive option.

W/R/T the comments early in your article about Windows 2000 not supporting drives larger than 137 GB, I’d like to issue a warning. Don’t install W2K directly to such a drive. Not even if it’s been slipstreamed with SP4 or later, and the EnableBigLBA option is set. Windows installs, but neither partitioning nor LBA handling is correct. At some future date it fills the first 137 GB, and (I speculate) the LBA addresses wrap around, and the drive silently corrupts itself.

This looks exactly like a BIOS 137 GB problem from outside. The giveaway is that the BIOS does know how big the drive is, and displays it during the prestart.

I tried slipstreaming SP6 and presetting the EnableBigLBA registry fix. Didn’t work; I don’t know why.

I found an easy workaround is install on a smaller drive, install SP6, set EnableBigLBA, then make a backup with Acronis True Image (google for “free acronis true image.) Then attach the large drive to the secondary controller, and restore the Acronis backup to the large drive with partition expansion enabled. Now the system is on the large drive and you’ve got a safe backup as a bonus.

So if you think you’ve got a BIOS 137 GB problem on a scratch install of Windows 2000, it’s quite possible that’s not the real problem.

By: czer27

czer27 — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:16:19 +0000

HDD Capacity Restore doesn´t work, following constellation:

I want to restore my PRI MASTER IDE drive after a mistake with SeaTools option “Set capacity to …”

I´ve removed PRI SLAVE IDE drive and started Windows XP from a third drive. There I´ve installed HDD Capacity Restore.

When I start HDD Capacity Restore and choose my PRI MASTER IDE drive (that is a WD1200JB) to restore, it says me: “The drive you choosen is used and cannot be deactivated. Go to the device manager and do it deactivate manually.

When I this do, I must restart Windows, before the deactivation is made.

When Windows will be restarted its first activity is to reinstall the drive I want to deactivate.

It is a snake biting in her tail.