Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

Webscreamer · Jun 20, 2003, 11:04 PM

I got a Dual 1ghz with a IBM 120 gig in here. Just the other day I noticed I no longer have a 120 gig installed...it only says 31.50!!! Did it die?!

Even Diskwarrior says 31.5. Damn, this sucks.

IBM Deathstar.

Scotttheking · Jun 20, 2003, 11:33 PM

120GB drives are not deathstars.
Are you sure someone didn't steal your drive, or you partitioned it, or something? Drives don't just change sizes like that.

Webscreamer · Jun 20, 2003, 11:51 PM

LOL...

thats what I mean!! WTF happened?!

CollinG3G4 · Jun 21, 2003, 12:54 AM

Too much P0rn.

curtlivingston · Jun 21, 2003, 01:48 AM

i've just been trying to resurrect a 40g drive that died painfully. It mostly refuses to mount and when it does says that it is 31.5g. Nortons in system 9 detected a partition block count error in the partition map (or something like that) but cannot fix it.
can you access the drive at all?

D'Espice · Jun 21, 2003, 06:38 AM

There is one and only one single way to turn a 120GB harddrive into a 32GB harddrive: a jumper.
Harddrives bigger than 32GB might cause some older mainboards to go belly-up since the BIOS-Software for these mainboards has a 32GB limit. Hence every harddrive has that so-called "compatibility jumper", limiting the size to 32GB in order to prevent the BIOS to go belly-up and do something stupid.
In order to use the full capacity again (because any OS will only "see" 32GB in case that jumper is set) you need software like EZBIOS that loads right after the BIOS has finished it's POST (Power-ON Selftest).
Like I said though, this is only needed in case you wanna put a new harddrive into an old computer (PC that is), Macs don't have that kind of problem. Hence I don't believe that it just "happened", maybe you or somebody else played around a bit and by accident set that jumper to compatibility mode.

It didn't die though, if a harddrive dies you know it - because it simply doesn't work anymore.

Webscreamer · Jun 21, 2003, 11:03 AM

Thanks for the great reply...

This reminds me of a similar problem I am having with my 10gig from my G4 400. I put it in the dual on Cable select and powers up and has a grinding sound for a sec. Doesn't mount and NOTHING sees the drive, not even Diskwarrior. So I thought the drive may be dead, so I switche jumpers and put it back in the 400..it didn't work!! Then I gave it one last shot..I put it in a firewire case and it worked perfectly... wtf is up with that?!

I could use help on this one too!

ReggieX · Jun 21, 2003, 11:24 PM

Originally posted by Webscreamer:
This reminds me of a similar problem I am having with my 10gig from my G4 400. I put it in the dual on Cable select and powers up and has a grinding sound for a sec. Doesn't mount and NOTHING sees the drive, not even Diskwarrior. So I thought the drive may be dead, so I switche jumpers and put it back in the 400..it didn't work!!

Depends: is there another drive in the Dual? You should put the jumpers to the proper slave or master setting (depending on if there's another drive in there) and try that instead. I don't "trust" cable select!

RussS · Jun 23, 2003, 03:32 AM

To those who think it can't happen unless you change the jumper setting, you might want to think again. I've got an IBM 60 gig that does the same dang thing and it's jumpered as Master. Disk utility showed it as 31.5 gigs currently formatted at 57.5 gigs!

It was the original drive in a Quicksilver 2002. It's now sitting in an external Firewire case. But I can't trust it for anything important. Sometimes It'll show up as a 57.5 GB drive, other times it shows up as a 31.5 GB drive.

Oh, before it started doing this it lost a couple gigs worth of data. Nothing was able to recover them. My advice is to replace that piece of S@#t IBM drive before you lose any important files.