A fantastic piece of HDD tool HDAT2.exe available from http://www.hdat2.com/download.html.
Problem: Bought a SAMSUNG HM320II 2.5" harddisk drive with 320GB capacity. It was working fine with 320GB of harddisk space until I tried to upgrade my laptop harddisk from 80GB to this HM320II 320GB. Horrific thing occurred and the Samsung HM320II shrink from 320GB to 80GB after I rebuilt the OS (Windows XP) with Dell's System Restore CD. I tried various means to recover the lost GB but to no avail.
Issue Fixed: Googled "Harddisk capacity restore" and found this fantastic tool HDAT2.exe.
1. This tool has to be run on MS-DOS, not Windows DOS.
2. Harddisk has to be attached to SATA interface, not via USB. In my case, i attached the harddisk on a laptop with SATA interface by pulling out the resident harddisk. This means that the laptop is now without any OS.
3. Create a MS-DOS bootable USB. Can follow the procedure below:
- Download the HP Flash Utility hpflash1.zip and also download the Windows 98 MS-DOS System Files win98boot.zip.
- Extract hpflash1.zip to any location of your drive.
- Double click on the executable to install.
- Extract win98boot.zip to any location of your drive.
- Launch the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool that was just installed. Choose your flash drive from the drop down list at the top [Device], and ensure that the file system is set to FAT32 [File system].
- Under [Format options] check/select "Create a DOS startup disk" option. Click on the "..." button near the text box to browse to the location of where you extracted the Windows 98 MS-DOS System Files.
- Click on "Start" button. You're done!
4. Copy HDAT2.exe to the USB drive.
5. Attached the USB drive to the laptop and boot.
6. Run C:\HDAT2.exe when system boots up and you see the C:\ prompt.
7. Select the disk that you want to restore (in my case HM320II).
8. Select "Set Max (HPA) menu.
9. Select "Set Max Address".
10. Type "L" to select LBA.
11. And BOOM!!! I got back my 320GB!!!
Words cant describe how i love you. I been booting to ubuntu then to windows as that restored my 2tb hdd actual size for a year, but That worked only until restart. Did this and no more booting to ubuntu frist. It seems ubuntu at stard did a temporary max hpa only, it would been welcomed if it had said so.
ReplyDeleteGlad to know it helps!
ReplyDeletechen