WD Hard Drive Size Issue

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage kony wrote:
On 2 Aug 2006 14:44:21 GMT, Arno Wagner
wrote:

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Garrot wrote:
Rod Speed wrote:

What is ? If 48LBA support is not provided, you will get corruption.



Would this explain why my 160Gb HDD corrupted after I formatted it with
Partition Magic 8 NTFS 3.1 instead of in XP SP2?

Partition Magic can corrupt disks entirely by itself and without
good reason. Don't trust that product.

Arno


If running it on a drive with data already on it, this may
be true.

On the other hand, we're considering a different situation-
PM8 created it, then chkdsk checked it. At this point,
running windows and successfully saving files to it, there
is no further aspect of PM8 corrupting it, the next event
was with Opera and the freezing.

I'm wondering if there isn't some other system instability
and the whole SP2/48bit LBA/PM8 combination is a tangent not
a cause.

Well, MS is not known for the stability of their filesystems. They
never designed them for the typical server situation (as, e.g., Unix
filesystems are), namely that shutdown is due to a power-failure at
any time and without warning. A server fs should recover from this
either automatically of at least during fukesystem check without
corruption to anything except the files written to during or shortly
before the crash. Given that typical server buffering can delay
writes for up to several minutes, this is quite a hard requirement to
fulfill.

Arno

Arno Wagner wrote:

Partition Magic can corrupt disks entirely by itself and without
good reason. Don't trust that product.

Arno

I've never had a problem when it formats as FAT32, just this NTFS issue.

Unlike FAT(32) which, of course, is not known for stability, NTFS is
fail-safe in the regard that its metadata is not corrupted by system
failures, thanks to its transactional nature. That assumes it's been
initially valid (i.e. formatted with proper means, not screwed up by some
third-party product).


"Arno Wagner" wrote in message
...

Well, MS is not known for the stability of their filesystems. They
never designed them for the typical server situation (as, e.g., Unix
filesystems are), namely that shutdown is due to a power-failure at
any time and without warning. A server fs should recover from this
either automatically of at least during fukesystem check without
corruption to anything except the files written to during or shortly
before the crash. Given that typical server buffering can delay
writes for up to several minutes, this is quite a hard requirement to
fulfill.

Arno

On 2 Aug 2006 14:44:21 GMT, Arno Wagner wrote:

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Garrot wrote:
Rod Speed wrote:

What is ? If 48LBA support is not provided, you will get corruption.



Would this explain why my 160Gb HDD corrupted after I formatted it with
Partition Magic 8 NTFS 3.1 instead of in XP SP2?

Partition Magic can corrupt disks entirely by itself and without
good reason. Don't trust that product.

Use the Data Lifeguard formatter from WD.


--

Stop Repeat Offenders!
Don't Re-elect Them!

Bob wrote
Arno Wagner wrote
Garrot wrote
Rod Speed wrote

What is ? If 48LBA support is not provided, you will get corruption.

Would this explain why my 160Gb HDD corrupted after I formatted
it with Partition Magic 8 NTFS 3.1 instead of in XP SP2?

Partition Magic can corrupt disks entirely by itself
and without good reason. Don't trust that product.

Use the Data Lifeguard formatter from WD.

Completely mad, use XP to format the drive.

On 31 Jul 2006, wrote:

Carl Lucas wrote:

Drive manufacturers consider 1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes, but
Windows thinks that 1GB = 1024^3 bytes. So 152,625MB (in
Windows) = 160,038,912,000 bytes



Thanks!

There's a class action under way now, claiming WD uses misleading
size figures. You can join if you've bought a WD drive recently.
Only the lawyers get any money! :-)


Is WD any diffrent to the other major hard drive manufacturers in how it
specifies a drive's capacity?

Joe S wrote:
On 31 Jul 2006, wrote:

Carl Lucas wrote:

Drive manufacturers consider 1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes, but
Windows thinks that 1GB = 1024^3 bytes. So 152,625MB (in
Windows) = 160,038,912,000 bytes



Thanks!

There's a class action under way now, claiming WD uses misleading
size figures. You can join if you've bought a WD drive recently.
Only the lawyers get any money! :-)


Is WD any diffrent to the other major hard drive manufacturers in how
it specifies a drive's capacity?

Yeah, they did manage one minor footshot.

On Tue, 1 Aug 2006 04:05:08 +1000, "Rod Speed"
wrote:

c wrote:

Been that way for years!

As for the OP;

You still need to run their software to change registry settings in windows.

Not with XP he doesnt.


You mean WITH SP1, or another patch with the updated ATAPI.
Just original XP will need it.

On Thu, 03 Aug 2006 03:09:05 GMT, "Alexander Grigoriev"
wrote:

Unlike FAT(32) which, of course, is not known for stability,

yes it is stable.

NTFS is
fail-safe in the regard

not it is not

that its metadata is not corrupted by system
failures, thanks to its transactional nature.

That doesn't make it more stable, it makes it more resistant
to certain types of problems. It is a reason to set up a
system properly, NEVER considering the filesystem for one
moment before ensuring the kinds of problems that would make
a difference, don't exist.

In general, there is no good reason to use NTFS for
stability reasons. Support of 4GB, yes, or security.
Trying to counter an instable system by using a certain
filesystem is like trying to be bulletproof by wearing
kevlar socks.

On Thu, 03 Aug 2006 12:35:38 GMT, (Bob) wrote:

On 2 Aug 2006 14:44:21 GMT, Arno Wagner wrote:

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Garrot wrote:
Rod Speed wrote:

What is ? If 48LBA support is not provided, you will get corruption.



Would this explain why my 160Gb HDD corrupted after I formatted it with
Partition Magic 8 NTFS 3.1 instead of in XP SP2?

Partition Magic can corrupt disks entirely by itself and without
good reason. Don't trust that product.

Use the Data Lifeguard formatter from WD.


That would work,
or Partition Magic,
or Win Disk Management.

There are plenty of ways to format a drive, but it is still
crucial that if the drive (partition) is 128GB, the OS
supports 48bit LBA. As someone mentioned previously when
using Windows Disk Management to format it, at least it will
only show 128GB partition so there is a sign something is
wrong, but so long as the OS had already been set (or by
Service pack) to support 48bit LBA, it can be ignored.