Hard drive (H:) shows size as 720kb, but is actually 80GB

Hi, I have a* 2.8 GHz P4 intel processor* with an *ASUS p5rd1-vm* mother
board and an *ATI radeon (128Mb) *Graphics Card with *768 Mb of RAM*. I
recently put in a new hard disk and everything was running fine while I
was using XP. I tried to install 7, but it did not work, so I decided to
revert back to XP. After installation everything seemed fine till I
checked on my hard drives. Drive H which should have a capacity of 85GB,
shows only 720kb in size when it's properties are checked. All the other
partitions seem to be working just fine. Also, when you click on the
drive, It asks you whether you want to format the drive. If you say Yes,
then another pop up appears "This Drive cannot be formatted". Any ideas?
Please HELP


--
SlapStick77
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SlapStick77's Profile: http://forums.techarena.in/members/235414.htm
View this thread: http://forums.techarena.in/xp-hardware/1348012.htm

http://forums.techarena.in

SlapStick77 wrote:
Hi, I have a* 2.8 GHz P4 intel processor* with an *ASUS p5rd1-vm* mother
board and an *ATI radeon (128Mb) *Graphics Card with *768 Mb of RAM*. I
recently put in a new hard disk and everything was running fine while I
was using XP. I tried to install 7, but it did not work, so I decided to
revert back to XP. After installation everything seemed fine till I
checked on my hard drives. Drive H which should have a capacity of 85GB,
shows only 720kb in size when it's properties are checked. All the other
partitions seem to be working just fine. Also, when you click on the
drive, It asks you whether you want to format the drive. If you say Yes,
then another pop up appears "This Drive cannot be formatted". Any ideas?
Please HELP



The very first question to ask about your situation is:

Is there any information on this disk or disks, that you
cannot afford to lose ?

If we needed to "level" or "zero" the machine, would that be OK ?

If not, do you have backups to use, to do a restore in
case of an emergency such as a disk failure ?

If you go to Start : Run : diskmgmt.msc and use the Disk Management
window, it should show a representation of how your disk or disks are
partitioned. A disk can have multiple partitions, so one physical disk
could be holding C:, D:, E:, F:, and so on.

If a partition is not initialized (hasn't had a file system put on it
yet), then that might the reason it wants to be formatted.

While I could dream up some pretty low level things to try, I'd
first start by describing what you see. For example, something
along these lines. This would be a physical disk ("Disk 0") which
has two partitions on it, plus an empty space at the end.

| +-----------------+--------------+-----------------+
Disk 0 | | C: | D: | Unallocated |
Basic | | FAT32 | NTFS | |
xxx GB | | Healthy (Active)| Healthy | |
Online | +-----------------+--------------+-----------------+

Does what you see look "normal" at all ? Maybe the MBR has been
written with bogus info, and a partition got shrunk and ruined ?

The program "TestDisk" can be used to compute a corrected MBR, but
I would not recommend using this, until we understand what happened
to your disk or disks. Any time you fool around with disks,
it's real easy to zap something permanently. If you don't have
backups, and need some of the data, then slow down and take
your time. Don't be in a rush to try every tool offered to you :-)

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step

720KB happens to be the size of a floppy diskette. The diskettes I
normally use here, are 1440KB high density ones. 720KB would be
the previous generation. I don't think it is a coincidence, of the
value 720KB. That might be telling you something, such as some tool
decided to make some kind of backup or emergency disk or partition.

Paul

On Jun 21, 10:38*pm, SlapStick77
wrote:
[...]
Drive H which should have a capacity of 85GB,
shows only 720kb in size when it's properties are checked.
[...]

Is H a drive, or a partition?
720kb -- total size, or free space ?

If H is a drive, take it offline and plug it to another PC to see
how it looks.

Can you access files on H: ?
If so, copy them to somewhere when you still can.

If H: is a partition, use some partition manager to check
if there are other hidden partition(s) that could account for
missing disk space.

Google "free partition manager".

feels like something went wrong during partitioning. maybe u entered
wrong figure when creating the partition? Or using an outer "Extended
Partition" can sometimes restrict the logical partitions inside.
Extended partitions are shown in GREEN at Window's Computer Management
Disk Management

to confirm if there are no damages to the hard disks, try these free
programs i use. check the hard disk SMART status

aeo3 hard disk smart viewer
http://aeo3.com/apps/hdsmart/index.html

or

or speedfan
http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php


--
adrwow
------------------------------------------------------------------------
adrwow's Profile: http://forums.techarena.in/members/235851.htm
View this thread: http://forums.techarena.in/xp-hardware/1348012.htm

http://forums.techarena.in