External HD

[torp]

Re: External HD

Well I DD'd this drive last night. It took 2 hours 45 minutes (I attribute to using USB vice SATA), but it still came back as a 32GB drive. Hmmm. Any ideas? I can't crack open my case and hook it up because the drive is IDE, and my onboard controller is SATA.

torp

[dibl]

Re: External HD

"Hmmmmmmm" is right!

I'm guessing that it was partitioned in its previous life, and your USB controller/translator has no means to see beyond the first partition boundary. Just a guess. The only way to know for sure would be to hook it up to a real IDE bus and FDISK it (DOS) or use GParted to delete the extra partitions (assuming they exist).

[Qqmike]

Re: External HD

Boy, if you zeroed-out the drive there should be nothing on it left to read (except zeros), not even a MBR or any partition boundaries. Did you try this: Turn off the PC, disconnect the drive ( power cord and USB cable). Reconnect the drive (power cord, USB cable, and turn it On), then turn On the PC and let it boot up, then check it.

[torp]

Re: External HD

Boy, if you zeroed-out the drive there should be nothing on it left to read (except zeros), not even a MBR or any partition boundaries. Did you try this: Turn off the PC, disconnect the drive ( power cord and USB cable). Reconnect the drive (power cord, USB cable, and turn it On), then turn On the PC and let it boot up, then check it.

I did zero it out as per the web link above. The procedure in shutting down and back on resulted in my system seeing a 32GB drive. I just can't understand it. This drive is blank as new. No partitions on it. My USB bus already has a 500GB MyBook external on it, and I'm having no problem there.

torp

[Qqmike]

Re: External HD

I'm not sure I know enough about this to say. What's the other variable(s)? The software controllers embedded on the disk itself? Is the disk somehow not-right? We've ruled out your BIOS being to blame. Maybe a hardware forum would know (http://forums.hardwareguys.com/ikonboard.cgi? is one, under Magnetic). Perplexing.

[Snowhog]

Re: External HD

As Sherlock Holmes said, "When all else is eliminated, what ever remains, however improbable, must be true."

Meaning, maybe the USB external HD really is just 32GB.

[torp]

Re: External HD

As Sherlock Holmes said, "When all else is eliminated, what ever remains, however improbable, must be true."

Meaning, maybe the USB external HD really is just 32GB.

Well, maybe through the miracle of modern electronics. But before Xmas it was 160GB!

[Qqmike]

Re: External HD

as I said, I don't really know for sure ...
is it a Seagate disk? if so, does SeaTools have anything on it that would restore it back?
... or try an email to the manuf's support line?
... did you post at a hardware forum?
...
What dd did you use?
Maybe try it again, this time with the Helix Live CD and the special DoD dd version?

[Qqmike]

Re: External HD

Just for the heck of it, to see what is after the first 32 GB, you might try something.

To see what's in the first 512 bytes following the first 32 GB, try this:

sudo dd if=/dev/sdx skip=62500000 bs=512 count=1 | hexdump -C

where

sdx is the drive you are looking at -- that'll be sda or sdb or something like that;
bs=512 means the block size to read is 512 bytes at a time (this is the default and so you don't have to include this explicitly, but I did so for clarity of explaining this);
the symbol “|” is the vertical bar, the pipe symbol, above the backwards slash “\”;
hexdump -C will cause the output to be written "in plain English and/or numbers" (i.e., not in binary);
skip=62500000 indicates to skip that many blocks each of size bs=512 bytes:
62500000*512 = 32000000000 = "32 GB";
count=1 means to copy just one block of size 512 bytes (starting at block 62500000);

HOWEVER, it might not be exactly 32000000000, so find out or guess what it is and convert that to blocks, where 1 block = 512 bytes. Or just pick some number beyond “32 GB” (whatever that is).
For example, 2 raised to the 35th power is: 2**35 = 34,359,738,368 (just to pick some number), and dividing that by 512 yields 67,108,864 blocks. So, you might try:

sudo dd if=/dev/sdx skip= 67108864 bs=512 count=1 | hexdump -C

If it's all zeros out there, you'll see something like this as output:

00000000 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |................|
*
(and so many blocks in and out etc.)
The "*" indicates a repetition of zeros (512 of them, indicated by bs=512 and count=1).