Fujitsu 10.2GB HDD only shows 8.4 (not BIOS limitation!)

[bph]

I have a Fujitsu MPE3102AT hard-drive which should be 10.2GB. However on any main-board I try, it comes up as 8.4GB (8455MB in the BIOS). My BIOS has the Int13 extensions because an MPG3204AT is detected correctly as 20.4GB and works properly. I've tried it with mode set in BIOS to Auto and LBA.

Is it likely that it could have been low-level formatted as 8.4 for use on an older BIOS, or is there some other explanation?

 

[sir nerdalot]

Well I can think of 2 reasons:

(1) When you get say an 80GB hdd you can only access maybe 78GB. They do this so you dont completely fill up your hard drive so then your PC would crash.

(2) My friend has an old 40GB Seagate Barracuda, on there is a jumper setting to limit the hard drive to 32GB.

I dont know if either of them are correct but its probably worth checking out.

 

[baronvongogo]

"FAQ
Q: Why is it called the 137gb barrier when the drive is shown as 127gb in windows?
A: 137GB refers to the metric number of bytes (as do hard drive manufacturers) in which the prefixes kilo, mega, giga etc are rounded to a multiple of 10. kilo being 1000, mega 1000000 and giga 1000000000. however computers operate in binary so the definition of these prefixes has been changed to fit the difference in numbers. for instance a kilobyte is actually 1024 bytes not 1000 bytes. therefore a megabyte is 1024x1024 and a gigabyte 1024x1024x1024 etc, binary quantities of bytes use an "i" in the suffix eg: MB vs. MiB and GB vs. GiB. so if the number 137,000,000,000 is taken (137gb) and divided by the number of bytes in 1 GiB (1,073,741,824 bytes) the number 127.59 results. hence 137GB=127GiB."

taken from from 137 barrier by nitestick

 

[TheMajor]

Maybe you have to set LBA in the BIOS or SCSI controller settings. Maybe it uses CHS by default, for this disk, for some reason.

 

[Nitestick]

i'm going to agree with TheMajor on this one. i've had similar annoying experiences. that drive should have ~9.5GiB.

(1) When you get say an 80GB hdd you can only access maybe 78GB. They do this so you dont completely fill up your hard drive so then your PC would crash.

i think you are a bit confused on this one . that is definitely not true. the cut and paste by baronvongogo is basically an explaination for why the drives have less space than advertised.

 

[baronvongogo]

Yeah I realised my cut and paste was incorrect for this as I entered all the numbers in a calculator and didnt get 8.2 . Could it be also possible its from a pre build comp and has other partitions taking up space? I know iv formatted before only to see those hidden partitions remaining.

 

[bph]

When I referred to 8.2GB and 10.2GB I was using "HDD-manufacturer-speak" - i.e. the numbers they write on the can! I realise the real Gigabyte capacity is somewhat lower. However there is no way 8.4GB = 10.2GB whichever way you count it.

The "32GB" limit is the next BIOS limitation up from the 8.4 limit, but it is no problem to me at present. 10.2GB is still a big drive as far as I'm concerned! There is no capacity limiting jumper on the drive, and Fujitsu did not make an 8.4GB drive in the MPE range according to their data.

Apparently a drive bigger than 8.4GB can be problematic on a BIOS without Int13 extensions which is why I thought it might have been low-level formatted to 8.4 (assuming this is possible). In this case I will have to settle for it as it is. I was hoping there might be a simple way of unlocking the extra capacity.

 

[TheMajor]

Yeah I realised my cut and paste was incorrect for this as I entered all the numbers in a calculator and didnt get 8.2 . Could it be also possible its from a pre build comp and has other partitions taking up space? I know iv formatted before only to see those hidden partitions remaining.

Not if the BIOS says 8.4 GB.