160 Gb in Inspiron e1505 reports as 40 gb

Question

The original HD in this inspiron e1505 was 40 gb and the danged thing still insists that it has a 40 GB. This is not what the OS thinks this is what the hardware reports apparently. I suspect a BIOS problem (flashed to A12 but no help) There are no controls in the BIOS to allow setting the HD size and since it's SATA I assumed it would report it's size (It does in another computer ie My MacBook) the drive passes ALL tests in both comps. Now I backed up the old drive using Acronis True Image and restored it the same. The drive functions perfectly as a 40gb drive but I want to be able to use the WHOLE drive. OS shows no unused space on the HD and even Linux (ubuntu partition editor) believes that this drive is only 40 GB. What am I missing? It's a brand new WD1600 Scorpion drive BTW. Scott

Bobmitmen · Answer

I am guessing that you backed up a 40 GB Hard drive with Acronis.  Like most imaging / backup programs...they also back up the master boot record and all drive information.  Once you restored your backup to the new 160 GB drive...you restored all information from that backup and only activated 40 GB of the new drive.  You need Partition magic or some other partition program to reclaim the remainder of your drive.    What you did happens all the time, when people backup and restore to new drives.   99% of all backup softwares will do the same thing.     Bob

Bobmitmen · Answer

If it's a Western Digital drive...try this...   http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp?cxml=n&pid=999&swid=53   Bob

sbeckstead · Answer

Ok But I've used nearly every partition editor and all they see is the 40Gb How do I reset the drive to be 160gb I've tried everything I can think of at this point. Even writing 0's to the mbr/boot sectors and no joy. There has to be a tool that will fix this.
Thanks,
Scott

sbeckstead · Answer

been there, done that. The software no longer believes this is a WD drive. Scott

sbeckstead · Answer

Found a utility to fix the problem. The LBA had been reduced to 28 bits when it should have been at 48. This tool allows you to fix that but there are dangers. Personal Blog: HDAT2/CBL Hard Disk Repair Utility Good luck!

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