Yes, HPA (Host Protected Area) problem definitely. There are instructions how to repair the drive in given link. I would suggest cloning partitions instead of HDD. Then it must work properly.
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Hard Drive Clone turning all target drives into smaller drives in bios
This is very odd - I am working on a Dell Inspiron E1505 notebook - the customer wants the data transfered to a new computer. The hard drive in the Dell is a 60GB Fujitsu MHV2060BH (SATA).
Using Acronis Migrate, I cloned the data to the new hard drive (a 250GB SATA).
The clone appears to complete normally - but when I finish cloning, the drive has been .... altered. If I put the cloned 250GB back into the Dell, I get a BSOD 0x0000007b.
But here is where it gets really strange - the 250GB drive is now reported as a 58.5GB drive in the BIOS of whatever computer I hook it up to.
Thinking that there was something wrong with the 250GB drive, I went and did the same thing with another 80GB SATA drive - and got the same result - the 80GB drive is now reporting to whatever computer I install it in that it has 58.5GB capacity.
I have tried erasing the drive under Windows as well as Mac OSX with no success. Acronis and Ghost show the incorrect size.
I am familiar with all the Cylinder/Heads/Sectors stuff from back in the day - but I have not seen an SATA system that supports modifying that stuff.
SO....
1) What happened... I can only assume some kind of virus?
and more importantly...
2) Is there any way to fix these drives?
thanks!
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Answers
As noted above, this is an issue caused by the host protected area used for Dell's Media Direct.
The problem is that the HPA hides the "end" of the disk (where the VERY-hidden Media Direct, Access Direct, etc., partition resides) ... so it is not "seen" by any disk utilities (since it's not exposed in the MBR). Consequently, when you clone this disk, the new disk will be exactly the same size as the original disk (in fact, they both "look" a bit smaller than the actual size of the original disk ... since the Media Direct (or whatever) partition is not included.
I'm not aware of any 3rd party disk utilities that will correctly clone a disk that uses the HPA. It was a "good idea" at the time ... or so it seemed ... but both Dell (with Media Direct) and (I think) IBM have switched to "normal" allocation schemes ... so I suspect they've decided the problems outweighted the advantages.
As for your problem: the truncated disk issue is well know; but is difficult to easily fix. Your new disk now has a very-well-hidden (and very large) HPA that is not "seen" by any disk utility or OS (and since your BIOS supports HPA, it doesn't show it either). There WAS a way to zero out the code BEFORE you cloned the drive; but doing so now on the original disk won't unhide what's already been done on the new disk. At this point, your best option is to use HDAT2 [http://www.hdat2.com/ ], which will reset a drive with an HPA partition to full capacity (see the first question in the FAQ for details on how to do this).
After you've recovered your full size, you should Image ONLY the OS partition and restore it to the new drive. Then ReSize that partition (using a good 3rd party partition manager --> Boot-It NG would be a good choice); and then create the additional partitions you want --> and just COPY the data from the extra partitions on the old disk. Note that you'll have to adjust the BOOT.INI file on the XP installation or it won't boot (unless you also image/restore the 1st partition -- so the XP partition is in the same relative partition as it was originally). If you use Boot-It to do the image/restore, it has a built-in capability to edit the BOOT.INI file as needed ... but other imagers have similar capabilities.
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by: SimplyRickPosted on 2009-09-11 at 17:59:45ID: 25314599
So, you clone your 60GB drive to a 250GB and even an 80GB drive and both show up in the *BIOS* as 58.5GB? And it shows up this way in the BIOS of multiple computers?
This website details the problem and solutions better than I can.
http://www.goodells.net/de
>> From the website:
"For example, say you wish to replace your 60 GB disk with a new 120 GB disk. To avoid reinstalling everything, you decide to use something like Acronis True Image or Symantec Ghost to clone the contents of the 60 GB disk to the 120 GB disk. When you try to boot the new disk, however, it blue-screens or fails to boot, and a check of the BIOS settings shows the BIOS thinks your new disk is around the same size as the old disk! No amount of recloning, reformatting, repartitioning, or rejumpering will get the BIOS to recognize the full size of the disk. "