Thinkpads Forum

My T41p came with a 60GB 7200 drive (7k60), Win XP Pro + HP. Its capacity is reported (by the system) to be 57GB though. I checked with the Hitachi Feature Tool that it's possible to resize the maximum reported capacity to 60GB but I'm afraid to destroy the hidden recovery partition or any other data.
Is it possible that the Hitachi software overrides the HP security in BIOS? What happens to the partitions and the system if I resize the capacity at a low level with the Hitachi Feature Tool software?
7k60 seems to be a very popular drive so I've been wondering if anyone has experienced a similar problem?

tafn,
Michal

i actually don't think you have a hidden partition. you didn't buy new, i'm assuming, and the hidden partition is already wiped out.
the reason? your 60 gig hard is only 57 gig, as shows up in windows. for example, my 100 gig shows up as 93 or something thereabouts. without the partition. because 60 gig doesn't mean 60 gigabytes. it means 60 billion bytes.
if you look it up, it's like this:
1 kilobyte is 1024 bytes. however, for hard drive manufacturers, they say kilo means 10^3, so 1000 bytes. so, keep that going for up to giga, and you'll have quite a big discrepancy.
do this: 60 000 000 000 bytes. calculating how many gigabytes it is, dividing by 1024 3 times.

I checked with the Hitachi Feature Tool that it's possible to resize the maximum reported capacity to 60GB

What on earth are you talking about?

mamamia wrote:i actually don't think you have a hidden partition. you didn't buy new,

Well, the way I actually set my system to new was to recover it from HP, so I *DO* have it.
All the algebra you've presented makes sense but that doesn't explain what the proprietary IBM/Hitachi software presents me with - to resize it to maximum possible reported by the software, i.e. 60.01, whatever it actually means and how it calculates the capacity. I've already used the software successfully with all my previous Hitachi/IBM HDDs to set any other disk features (smart values, ata speeds, and others) so I don't really have a reason not to believe it. That is why I was hoping for some other educated guesses here.

Thx anyway

dr_st wrote:

I checked with the Hitachi Feature Tool that it's possible to resize the maximum reported capacity to 60GB

What on earth are you talking about?

Well, I'm puzzled. I reckon the language is not a problem here so what is that you don't understand? Take a look at my reply to mamamia's post and perhaps this might shed some light on the second thoughts that the Feature Tool gave me. BTW, if you don't know the software you might take a look at the software, which I am sure is a well known one over here - look for Feature Tool.