Double you Hard Drives capacity

[Gh0s7 L3mUr]

Anyone keen to give this (http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=14597) a go?

The results they got include 510Gb on a WD 250GB, 150GB on a IBM 80GB.

Damn it's tempting to try..

*looks at 2*WDse 80GB's* :D

[Deviant]

You beat me to posting this story.

Anyway, for those who don't read articles, or think this is double spacing it's not. It's basically claiming un-allocated space that HDD manufacturers disable on their drives. eg, the make a batch of 510GB drives, and then restrict them to 200GB etc 250GB etc.

Interesting, an I might just try it on my second computer.

[Oblivian]

Interesting on how all the letters in http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=14608 say its BS :P

Someone would need to test using a full partition like mentioned.

I can see the theory being correct, as 40-100gb drives are generally the same number of platters but with differing sides enabled. (opened 2 drives here before with 2 platters, 1 had 3 sides working another all 4) but hard to beleive it would be that easy.

[MaZeR]

It's BS. Think about it. Manufacturers do not make 510GB drives and short stroke them to 200GB. WD don't even short stroke their drives anyway. All they have done is found a bug that tricks windows into thinking there is more space than there actually is.

Please try it. See how much data you can write to one of these magical discs. Hopefully you won't write over your firmware and kill it :)

[CommanderK]

I'm getting a 160gb second hand in a few days, so I'll try it on that.

Edit: after reading some the replys that I didn't see before I might only do it with a small drive first or not do it at all, I was naturaly suspuois (sp?) the inquirer.net, but it sounded so good. But as the saying goes "if it's too good to be true, then it proberly is":( :rolleyes:

[Gh0s7 L3mUr]

Well looks like I've got the right build of Ghost. Still don't know if I'm willing to try it as I'm running short of space as it is. I might try it with one of my small old drives when I get a new 160GB.

[Deviant]

Originally posted by MaZeR
It's BS. Think about it. Manufacturers do not make 510GB drives and short stroke them to 200GB. WD don't even short stroke their drives anyway. All they have done is found a bug that tricks windows into thinking there is more space than there actually is.

Please try it. See how much data you can write to one of these magical discs. Hopefully you won't write over your firmware and kill it :)

It may be BS, but there have been many components that have disable features, because it's easier to mass produce one product, and disable features.

Just think about Nvidia Geforce cards into Quatro cards, Radeon 9500's into 9800 Pro's, CPU's from Intel and AMD with 1/2 the cache disabled, but you can enable it later, Creative Live sound cards, that you can get Audigy2 features, CD-Burners and DVD Burners that work fine at higher speeds with a cracked firmware, motherboards like the A7V which you could enable the on board RAID controller that it supposidely didn't come with, and the list could go on.

Don't be so quick to judge and use your own advice and think about it first!

[MaZeR]

Originally posted by Deviant
It may be BS, but there have been many components that have disable features, because it's easier to mass produce one product, and disable features.

Just think about Nvidia Geforce cards into Quatro cards, Radeon 9500's into 9800 Pro's, CPU's from Intel and AMD with 1/2 the cache disabled, but you can enable it later, Creative Live sound cards, that you can get Audigy2 features, CD-Burners and DVD Burners that work fine at higher speeds with a cracked firmware, motherboards like the A7V which you could enable the on board RAID controller that it supposidely didn't come with, and the list could go on.

Don't be so quick to judge and use your own advice and think about it first!

It is BS. The flaw in your logic is that WD don't sell 510GB drives.

For a more technical description of why this is complete rubbish I suggest you visit http://forums.storagereview.net/index.php?showtopic=14396

If it works at all, all it really accomplishes is trick windows into thinking the partition really is bigger than it is. There's NO WAY it could get any bigger in reality, since drive capacity is based on the number of sectors the drive reports to the computer, and that is a fixed, hard-coded number that can't be changed by Norton Ghost or any other utility. If you try to address sector maxcapacity+1, you'll just get an error message back from the drive, it won't actually do anything.

[NinJa_CookiE]

Nope im with Mazer.. don't go there. It's the same as CPU's, they might spec higher, but often don't pass the test.

Most of these drives use those sectors for bad block remapping, and a lot of it isn't usuable anyways.

[Deviant]

MaZer's link give good arguments why it won't work on a 200GB HDD, but also makes it more believable that it could work on 20 or 40 GB HDD's.

No one has got proof either way. I'll believe it after someone actually tries it, and says it either works or doesn't.

I have never said it works, and have said it maybe BS just there is nothing credible to go on yet, either way.

[BloodDonor]

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=99899&cid=8518967

I'm a Ghost developer.

This is just a method of corrupting your partition table so the same disk sectors appear more than once. If you try this, don't ask Symantec for help afterwards.


oh well

[chopsuwe]

Manufactures will often limit the procduct because it doesn't make the grade.

Back in the day when 3.5" floppies were $30/box of 10 we would buy the cheaper double density ones, and drill a hole in the corner so the drive would think they were high density. Every single one of this disks died within 18 months. Allmost all the cheap and nasty brand high density disks bought at the same time lasted over 4 years.

Personally I don't concider it worth the risk. In my opinion the hard drive is the most important part of the computer. It is where all your data is stored, it is what makes the computer the way it is, and isn't worth messing with. Overclock the processor, fine. If it does overheat and die I'll get a new one. If my hard drive corrupts and I loose my homework and fail the course it wasn't worth it.