250GB External HD only showing as 128GB

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Level 4

2,485 points

250GB External HD only showing as 128GB

Hi,

I have a 250GB HD in a USB external enclosure that's showing up in Finder (and Disk Utility) as only a 128 GB harddrive...this had been happening on and off for a while (ie. sometimes it'll show as 250, sometimes as 128), but ever since running a disk repair (and just recently running Disk Warrior), it stays at 128. Any ideas why?

G4 eMac, Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Posted on Aug 13, 2006 8:02 AM

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Answer 1

Eric X

Level 1

10 points

Aug 13, 2006 8:45 AM in response to CrzyCanuck72

Are you sure that your enclosure supports 300 GB? For one standard of ATA, the maximum disk size is around 130 GB.
I had similar problems with my external hard drive (it was 250, but showed up as little as 7 GB or as large as 3 TB). They deduced that it was a hardware problem, and it's in for repairs now.

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Answer 2

CrzyCanuck72 Author

Level 4

2,485 points

Aug 13, 2006 8:47 AM in response to Eric X

the enclosure manufacturer says that it supports up to 500 GB drives. The HD showed up as 250 GB for 8 months, and only now is showing up as 128...

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Answer 3

Eric X

Level 1

10 points

Aug 13, 2006 9:09 AM in response to CrzyCanuck72

It's possible that your disk is corrupted, and the utility is only seeing the "good" part of the drive. If you're still under warranty, I'd send it in.

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Answer 4

CrzyCanuck72 Author

Level 4

2,485 points

Aug 13, 2006 9:10 AM in response to Eric X

if it helps, someone else suggested I run the "pdisk /dev/disk2" command in Terminal, and it came up with this:

Partition map (with 512 byte blocks) on '/dev/disk2'
#: type name length base ( size )
1: Applepartitionmap Apple 63 @ 1
2: Apple_Driver43*Macintosh 56 @ 64
3: Apple_Driver43*Macintosh 56 @ 120
4: AppleDriverATA*Macintosh 56 @ 176
5: AppleDriverATA*Macintosh 56 @ 232
6: Apple_FWDriver Macintosh 512 @ 288
7: AppleDriverIOKit Macintosh 512 @ 800
8: Apple_Patches Patch Partition 512 @ 1312
9: Apple_Free 262144 @ 1824 (128.0M)
10: Apple_HFS AppleHFS_Untitled1 488133184 @ 263968 (232.8G)
11: Apple_Free 16 @ 488397152
Device block size=512, Number of Blocks=488397168 (232.9G)
DeviceType=0x0, DeviceId=0x0
Drivers-
1: 23 @ 64, type=0x1
2: 36 @ 120, type=0xffff
3: 21 @ 176, type=0x701
4: 34 @ 232, type=0xf8ff

I don't know how to make sense of all that, but could "232.9G" be 232.9GB, which is the correct size of the disk?

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Answer 5

CrzyCanuck72 Author

Level 4

2,485 points

Aug 13, 2006 9:12 AM in response to Eric X

if it helps, someone else suggested running the "sudo pdisk /dev/disk2 -dump" command in Terminal, and it came up with this:

Partition map (with 512 byte blocks) on '/dev/disk2'
#: type name length base ( size )
1: Applepartitionmap Apple 63 @ 1
2: Apple_Driver43*Macintosh 56 @ 64
3: Apple_Driver43*Macintosh 56 @ 120
4: AppleDriverATA*Macintosh 56 @ 176
5: AppleDriverATA*Macintosh 56 @ 232
6: Apple_FWDriver Macintosh 512 @ 288
7: AppleDriverIOKit Macintosh 512 @ 800
8: Apple_Patches Patch Partition 512 @ 1312
9: Apple_Free 262144 @ 1824 (128.0M)
10: Apple_HFS AppleHFS_Untitled1 488133184 @ 263968 (232.8G)
11: Apple_Free 16 @ 488397152
Device block size=512, Number of Blocks=488397168 (232.9G)
DeviceType=0x0, DeviceId=0x0
Drivers-
1: 23 @ 64, type=0x1
2: 36 @ 120, type=0xffff
3: 21 @ 176, type=0x701
4: 34 @ 232, type=0xf8ff

I don't know how to make sense of all that, but is it possible that "232.9G" means 232.9GB, which is the correct size of the disk?

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