I am using Norton Ghost 10.0 on My Dell Inspiron E1505 laptop to copy my existing 80 GB SATA hard drive to a larger 320 GB SATA Hard Drive. I had the larger drive attached to my laptop using a USB connection.     I formatted the new 320 GB drive with the entire free space as one partition.

I started the copy process and the settings I chose were:
•      Resize drive to fill unallocated space
•      Set drive active (for booting OS)
•      Disable SmartSector copying
•      Ignore bad sectors during copy
•      Did not give the new drive a drive letter
•      Made the destination partition primary
•      Selected “copy MBR”

When the copy was completed, I saw that my new drive had unallocated space of 73.12 GB which is the same size as my original hard drive.  Did this process turn my 320 GB hard drive into a hard drive with only 80 GB available? Is there a way to reverse this process so I can go back to having 320 GB available on the new drive and I can try again?

e_lou,

Does your new HD contain an OS that is bootable? Or is the HD empty? This will determine how we remove the HPA and prevent it recurring.

e_lou,

As you have gathered from that thread, there are several ways to fix your problem. The following is the easiest..

First, make sure the HPA will not recur in the future. Either remove the Dell MBR and replace it with a standard MBR or zero LBA-3. Unless you are familiar with using a Disk Editor from DOS I suggest the former approach. Use a Win98 (not a WinXP) boot disk. Boot from the disk and at the A: prompt type fdisk /mbr and press ENTER. You won't see anything happen. It just goes back to the A: prompt. The Dell MBR has now been replaced with a standard MBR.  

You can get a Win98 boot CD from..

http://www.allbootdisks.com/download/iso.html  (get the Win98SE_bootdisk.iso and burn it with ImgBurn)

Second, remove the HPA. I suggest using SeaTools for DOS

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools/

To use the CD....

boot from CD
select your HD
Advanced features
Set Capacity to Max Native
Exit

Now your new HD should show its full capacity. Confirm this but don't create any partitions.

Before cloning your old HD to the new HD you have to zero LBA-3 on the old HD so the truncation issue doesn't recur. Doing this will break the MediaDirect function on your laptop. If you want to preserve the MediaDirect function then you can't clone. You have to use image/restore but don't copy the MBR to the new HD.

To zero LBA-3, download Roadkil’s Sector Editor.

http://www.roadkil.net/listing.php?Category=2

Unzip the file and copy sectedit.exe to a folder in your HD. Double click sectedit.exe. In the Select Disk box choose Physical 0 and click Open. (DON’T choose any of the drive letters). Use the arrows at the bottom right to find LBA-3. It should take 3 clicks. It will probably look like this.

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b16/bjkdegree/lba-3_dan.gif

If you find the "[XLDR]" string in the lower right, that's a good clue that you are looking at the right sector.

Click Edit, Zero Data. Now you should see all zeroes. Click File, Save Sector. Close Roadkil. Double click sectedit.exe again and confirm that LBA-3 has been zeroed.

You can now clone your HD. I choose not to disable SmartSector copying as it's faster. See...

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1148252120;start=

Any questions?

e_lou,

One refinement. As Ghost 10 does partition copies rather than disk copies, you could avoid zeroing LBA-3 on the old HD by choosing NOT to copy the MBR when you copy the partitions from the old HD to the new HD.

e_lou,

When you get to the cloning your HD stage, make sure the new HD is empty. No partitions at all. Unallocated space means no partitions.

You should have 3 partitions on your old HD. You only need to copy the first two. The first is the Dell diagnostic partition, the second is WinXP and the third is the Dell restore partition. The third partition isn't needed if you have Ghost and are making your own backup images.

e_lou,

Yes, try again. If it fails, try these other tools.

HDAT2  
http://www.hdat2.com/

Boot from the CD
Select your HD
Select Set MAX (LBA)
Select Set Maximum Address
Make the changes to the New Value



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

Boot from the CD
Select your HD
Features
Change Capacity
Options
Maximum Capacity
OK, OK



Magic Boot Disk                                                                                                                  http://hddguru.com/download/software/Magic-Boot-Disk/Magic_Boot_Disk_ISO_v2.0.zi...

Boot from the Magic Boot Disk CD. Accept the defaults.
At C:\MHDD> type MHDD and press Enter.
Type the number of your HD (it should be 1) and press Enter.
Now the prompt is MHDD>
Type RHPA and press Enter. Make a note of your Native Maximum LBA address. You will also see your reduced HD size.
Type NHPA and press Enter. Type Y for “Do you want to set Native LBA address”. Type Y for “Continue”.
Type RHPA and press Enter. Your HD should be full size.
Type exit

@ Brian:
The HDAT2 Utility fixed the problem.  My new hard drive is restored to its original capacity. 

Thank you for your help