Lost Drive Capacity after Imaging

[Douglar]

About 18 months ago, I imaged a 60GB Fujitsu hard drive onto a 90GB Avant SSD ( firmware 3.6.1) using Macrium free. I confirmed that the drive was a 90GB drive before imaging.

I was going to expand the partition after imaging, but after the imaging was complete, disk manager, diskpart, the bios, and Macrium all saw the SSD as a 60GB drive. I was in a hurry, so I let it go, since the imaging worked and I needed to give the system back.

Recently the drive came back to me and I'd like to reclaim that 50% space so that I can put windows 10 on it.

The disk still calls itself AVSM20A4 090M4 in device manager. That "90" in the name is because it is a 90 GB drive. No one swapped stickers.

I wiped all the partitions, I've tried re-writing the master boot record, converting to a GPT, messing around with boot ice, and I cannot figure out what happened.

I would low level format the drive if Avant offered such a tool, but I cannot find one on their web site.

Is it possible that re-imaging somehow freaked the drive's firmware out so that it thinks it is lower capacity now?

 

[ArisVer]

Searching Google for this I have found only one link, a pdf of their series. They have a US, Texas telephone in case you want to contact them.

http://www.avanttechnology.com/pdf/DataSheets/Mobile 2.5 - 1xxx - Datasheet.pdf

 

[corkyg]

Looks like youd id a direct "as is" clone job from smaller to larger instead of proportional. Imaging can take two paths - one backup/restore and the other cloning. Looks like you took the clone path as is.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Looks like youd id a direct "as is" clone job from smaller to larger instead of proportional. Imaging can take two paths - one backup/restore and the other cloning. Looks like you took the clone path as is.

But, normally, that does not change the "max LBA" that the drive is capable of, and that should be reflected in Disk Management, there should be a portion of the drive that is "unallocated". That's not showing up, so it makes me wonder if the cloning program did a "set max LBA" command on the SSD, to change the max LBA to equal the source drive of the clone.

You can fix that manually by booting a Linux LiveDVD / USB, and using "hdparm" commands. (Don't forget the "sudo" in front of that command, to run in admin mode.)

 

[Douglar]

But, normally, that does not change the "max LBA" that the drive is capable of, and that should be reflected in Disk Management, there should be a portion of the drive that is "unallocated". That's not showing up, so it makes me wonder if the cloning program did a "set max LBA" command on the SSD, to change the max LBA to equal the source drive of the clone.

You can fix that manually by booting a Linux LiveDVD / USB, and using "hdparm" commands. (Don't forget the "sudo" in front of that command, to run in admin mode.)

Thanks Larry. I was just coming to the same conclusion, but you got there first.

Looks like intel has a windows tool here:
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/23931/Intel-Solid-State-Drive-Data-Center-Tool

The Intel SSD DCT is a drive management tool for Intel SSD Data Center Family of products, providing the following key features for both Intel SATA and Intel PCIe® drives:
...
Resizing the SSD's usable storage capacity by changing its maximum LBA setting
...

I'll play with that later today.

This looks like it provides some academic back ground on the feature:

https://www.utica.edu/academic/inst...icles/EFE36584-D13F-2962-67BEB146864A2671.pdf

Address offset
In order to boot from the reserved area and to utilize the disk utilities, address-offset boot method was proposed in the address offset feature proposal (Colegrove, 1998). This method allows HDD to boot from its reserved area. If the device supports the address-offset feature, then it will do so by setting bit 7 of identify device word 83. The typical use would be to first set the HPA using the non-volatile SET MAX ADDRESS command, and then issue the SET FEATURES command to the HDD. This will result in changing the location of the first sector (LBA 0), to the start of the protected area that was set using the non-volatile SET MAX ADDRESS command. Due to this change, the former user area now becomes the reserved area. Once the SET FEATURES command has been issued, the device will set bit 7 of the Identify device word 86 and indicate that the device is in the offset mode.

 

[Douglar]

Thanks for helping me work through this. I remember having some trouble getting the partitions boot-able with the dell recovery partition after the original imaging. I started clicking switches until things worked. I must have reset the max LBA on the new drive.

I used this tool and it fixed the drive:

http://blog.atola.com/restoring-factory-hard-drive-capacity/

Doug

 

[corkyg]

When I clone different size drives, particularly smaller to larger, if I chose "As Is" instead of proportional, the resulting image will be the same size as the original leaving unallocated space.

That unallocated space can be recovered later with different software to enlarge the image partition. But, if Proportional is selected, then the new image will fill up the larger drive proportionally - at least it does with Acronis.

 

[Elixer]

Hmm, I never knew Macrium to do this before... maybe it was a bug.

 

[Douglar]

Hmm, I never knew Macrium to do this before... maybe it was a bug.

I remember using Macrium, but I also remember that I couldn't get the new drive to boot for a while. I was in a hurry and it was late, so I probably ran some random things from the internet that I didn't fully understand. I didn't know that it was possible to reset the max LBA value.