Hard Disk problems.

[joeyjoe367]

Ok,

got this Western Digital 7200 RPM hard disk drive that's on the fritz as of late. It's registering as a 33.8 Gig HD when it's really an 80 gig HD.

It had been happening occasionally before, but I'd just turn off the computer and power supply and restart, and it'd usually go back to seeing the 80 gig drive again.

It won't go back anymore

I tried to set the heads/sectors/cylenders, etc... manually, but my Mainboard (Elitegroup K7S5A 3.0) doesn't wanna let me do that either.

Is there something I'm missing? I tried calling WD tech support, but since it's past their 90 day warranty, they want $15 to have some dude read out of a spiral bound notebook I'd like to keep my $15 if at all possible.

Anyway, here are my sys specs if it helps any:

Enhance 300 Watt Power supply (AMD Certified)
Elitegroup K7S5A 3.0 Mainboard
AMD Athlon XP 1700
Innogear GeForce 2 Ti
Soundblaster live (Value)
Western Digital WD800BB 7200 RPM HD (The one that's busted)
Fujitsu ...something 10 gig HD

and other crap... CD Rom drives, mouse, keyboard etc... that's not really relevant.

Any help is greatly apreciated.

[jpdgas]

What OS are you running?
You might want to see if you can get a bios update. im not familliar with your mainboard, but usually a HD recognition problem is an OS or mainboard issue. if you can, try throwing the drive in another pc and see if it sees it. this will tell you if its the hd or not. sorry i can't help more.

[jdev]

fdisk > enable large disk support...?

eh.. may or may not work.

try searching google news groups for he problem, or better yet, check WD's website, may have updated drivers for the hard drive itself.

[Orange Crush]

I agree with jdpgas...try a bios update. If that doesn't work you could try to find a partitioning program like Partition Magic or something similar and break the drive up into 2 40Gb partitions.....

[MantisMag]

do you have EZ-BIOS installed? that's usually what WD gives you to get your older mobos to recognize larger hard drives.

[OKJEFF4]

I had this problem with my Maxtor 120. You may have to get a new jumper setting from the WD website.

[gibby]

I must admit, I used to love WD hard drives...but the last few drives I've owned these past years, all have gone bad and I've had to send it in to get it refurbished. I've lost a lot of data that way and it's quite disappointing. Good luck with your hard drive but if you need to buy a new one, stay away from WD drives.

[joeyjoe367]

What's odd is the problem seems to have fixed itself. It sees itself as an 80 gb hard disk again, minus my files

Anyway, i tossed some random files on there, and it copies fine. I don't think I'm going to put anything too important on there for a while. I'm going to give it a week or so, and if it doesn't freak out on me again, I'll be a relativly happy camper.

...stay tuned