300Gb HD thinks its a 80Gb after cloning MBR

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1

I have a 300Gb drive that was removed from a fried laptop. I figured to replace an older laptop’s 80Gb HD.

Using WDAcronis I created an image and placed it in the new drive. When I was asked about copying the MBR

I answered yes… I have tried copying all zeroes to no avail. I sure would like to remedy this issue. Can anything be done or am I stuck with an 80Gb HD.

2

I don’t know you may find more help on the Acronis forum http://forum.acronis.com/ I’m just guessing but think it is in MRB it may need editing or repair or be recreated.

Joe

3

When you copied the MBR, you copied the partitioning information. This should have left you with 220GB of unallocated space.

However, if your laptop is a Dell with a Media Direct partition, then Dell has a non-standard MBR that truncates your drive by creating a HPA (Host Protected Area).

You can HDAT2 to restore the full capacity of the drive, but you must replace Dell’s MBR code with standard Microsoft code before rebooting your drive. You can use FIXMBR to do this.

See this thread for more information:
http://community.wdc.com/t5/Other-Internal-Drives/Drive-Capacity-issues/m-p/14604#M156