WD6000HLHX formatted at 300GB instead of 600GB

I used this drive as part of a new build with an ASRock z68 Extreme motherboard. When I loaded Windows 7 Home Premium the drive would only format at 300GB. It is connected to the Sata 3 port 0. It is not connected to either of the Marvel Sata 3 ports. Has anyone ever experienced or heard of this problem before?

HI there, check in your BIOS/UEFI if the drive shows 600GB. If it does then zero it out with DLG or any other program able to make a low level format and clean the drive.

The seller, Comp-U-Plus, acknowledged the problem and said it was a known manufacturer’s defect. They told me to ship it back and they’d refund my money. They would not give me a 600GB drive for what I paid for the drive they sent me. I reformatted the drive three times and it always showed in the BIOS and Device Manager as 300GB.

Is it possible that the drive’s capacity has been cut by a HPA? If so, then you could use HDAT2 or the HDD Capacity Restore Tool to restore the drive’s full native capacity:

http://hddguru.com/software/2007.07.20-HDD-Capacity-Restore-Tool/
http://www.hdat2.com/