WD15EARS 1.5TB showing up as 500GB after shutdown

WD Internal Drives Desktop & Mobile Drives
1

Guys i’ve read all the similar posts on this issue with gigabyte boards. The thing is i need a permanent fix and i’m not sure if its the motherboard or the drive.

This drive was running fine for months then one day i turned my comp on and the drive was showing up as a 500gb(in the bios) that needed to be formatted. The only way i can get it back to 1500gb is by running gigabytes xpress recovery 2, however this only fixes the problem temporarily as soon as i shutdown my comp it goes back to 500gb. I don’t have another comp to test this drive on. What do i do?

My specs are:

Gigabyte mobo GAM59SLIS4 - latest bios

Athlon 64 5200+

4gig corsair ram

Radeon 4870

Win 7 64bit

Creative sound card

Raptor 150gb as my main drive

2

The problem is that Gigabyte’s Xpress Recovery BIOS has a bug.

See this thread:
http://community.wdc.com/t5/Desktop/1-5-terrabyte-used-as-temporarily-backup-suddenly-shows-up-as/m-p/10747#M614

You can also try the HDD Capacity Restore Tool:
http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2007.07.20-HDD-Capacity-Restore-Tool/

I would also upgrade your motherboard BIOS.

3

I’ve tried this tool, it doesn’t work. IT just says failed to load driver, is this becaues i’m using windows 7??

4

Use a bootable version of HDAT2 instead.

HDAT2/CBL Hard Disk Repair Utility:
http://www.hdat2.com/

5

*smacks forehead* off course, thanks dude :slight_smile:

6

Dude, the bootable version seems useless. The manuals don’t help either, have you used it before, can you tell me step by step how to get it to restore my HD capacity.

7

HDAT2 FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions):
http://www.hdat2.com/hdat2_faq.html#q1

Here is a third utility:

Hitachi Feature Tool:
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#FeatureTool

Hitachi Feature Tool Usage Instructions:
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/ftool_user_guide_198.pdf

1 Like