HDAT2 forum

Hi,

I've got a Acer Travelmate 8000 Notebook which does not recognize my 250Gig WD2500BEVE Harddisk: Only 137Gig are reported by the BIOS.

HDAT2 says:
HPA_IS_ACTIVE+LOCKED
SET MAX security: enabled

The HD-size reported by HDAT2 is 137 Gig.
The native size reported by HDAT2 is 250 Gig.

I tried to set the max adress to the native value, saved the change permanently, and there was message that the command has been successfully executed.

But after i do a reboot, the drive is again HPA-active like before.
How can this be? Is it possible that the BIOS of my notebook sets the HPA state on each boot?

I do not have a special MBR on my drive that sets the value.
I also tried to do a Restore in the Device Configuration Menu, but the command aborted.
Bypassing the DCO frozen state also did not work using the technique described in A2: HDAT2 does not recognize my disk when I plug it in after booting.

Can You please help me? I have no more ideas....

Thx

Hi,

the problem could be that HPA is locked (from BIOS) and/or
- BIOS sets HPA self (look in BIOS for any HPA settings)
- you have the same problem like on Dell notebook's (see FAQ nr. 15):

The Dell MBR (Master Boot Record at sector 0) calls special code in LBA sector 3 to re-enable the HPA anytime you boot from the hard disk. After you unhide the HPA, in order for it to stay unhidden you need to either get rid of the Dell MBR (so LBA-3 doesn't get called) or you need to disable LBA-3 (wipe LBA sector 3).

Look over sector 3 on HDD if you find some binary code, when yes
try to backup contents of this sector 3 and then wipe it with zeroes.
Maybe it will help you.

>Bypassing the DCO frozen state also did not work using the technique described in A2: HDAT2 does not recognize my disk when I plug it in after booting.

Yes, this doesn't work for 2.5" HDD on some notebook's, sorry.

Hi,

I also suspect that the BIOS somehow locks the HPA feature, or sets it while booting.
Unfortunately there are almost no configurable features in this BIOS.
For example you can't even view the size of the installed Harddisk in the BIOS! This really annoying.
I dont think the MBR is to blame, since I installed it myself with a tool named "xxclone".

I will try the following: install the drive into a desktop computer and try to get rid of the HPA there permanently, and see if it keeps the setting after re-installing the drive in my notebook.

Wish me luck

I had no luck

In my desktop PC it was possible to set HPA to off permanently, so it survives hard-resets.
But as soon as I installed the disk in my notebook and booted from the HDAT2-CD it is again HPA-protected!
To check if HPA was set on the HD i reinstalled the disk in Desktop PC again, and HDAT2 says it does not have HPA!

How can it be that HDAT2 reports different settings in two different PCs?
Is this a BIOS-Issue?

Greetings and a Happy New Year in advance!
Mathias

>How can it be that HDAT2 reports different settings in two different PCs?
Is this a BIOS-Issue?

Yes, in this case it is BIOS issue only.
Did you check the contents of sectors 1-62 ?
If you don't have the data on disk wipe first 100 sectors on disk
and look if you got HPA again.

On the contrary it should be some BIOS settings (try to set default settings).

Happy New Year !

fry4343 wrote:Hi,

I've got a Acer Travelmate 8000 Notebook which does not recognize my 250Gig WD2500BEVE Harddisk: Only 137Gig are reported by the BIOS.

HDAT2 says:
HPA_IS_ACTIVE+LOCKED
SET MAX security: enabled

The HD-size reported by HDAT2 is 137 Gig.
The native size reported by HDAT2 is 250 Gig.

I tried to set the max adress to the native value, saved the change permanently, and there was message that the command has been successfully executed.

But after i do a reboot, the drive is again HPA-active like before.
How can this be? Is it possible that the BIOS of my notebook sets the HPA state on each boot?

I do not have a special MBR on my drive that sets the value.
I also tried to do a Restore in the Device Configuration Menu, but the command aborted.
Bypassing the DCO frozen state also did not work using the technique described in A2: HDAT2 does not recognize my disk when I plug it in after booting.

Can You please help me? I have no more ideas....

Thx

Sorry if I'm wrong but 137 GB (128 GiB) maximum size looks to me like 48 bit LBA support being disabled. Try to enable LBA-48 in HDD's Device Configuration Overlay and then look if something changes about that. Of course, you need a BIOS with LBA-48 support. If this is not the case, try to flash the computer with the newest official firmware for your motherboard. Attention: through flashing incorrectly you could destroy the motherboard!

I had exactly this problem with HPA on my Acer TravelMate 8004LMi (BIOS version 3A20) with WD1600BEVE hard drive.

I solved it with HDAT2 v4.5.2 as follows:
1. SET MAX (HPA) Menu --> set new NATIVE MAX ADDRESS [last sector] (in 48bit LBA mode) -- so user area will have full drive capacity now
2. Device Configuration Overlay Menu --> Modify --> Host Protected Area feature --> set REMOVE action

Now drive reports that doesn't support HPA and BIOS leaves the drive as is

Yes, this is a good way to disable HPA for hard disk and BIOS together.

@drasar: thanks for the description, worked fine for me too!
@cbl: thanks for the software

And now the detailed description - if somebody is interested to it or that google can find it:

I've got the same problem: Acer Travelmate 660 (662LCI), newest Bios (3A19, even so it's already 5 years old...) and a WesternDigital WD3200BEVE 320GB harddisk.

BTW. I've already changed the harddisk once - from the initial 60GB to 120GB with the same procedure and all worked fine. But this time something different should happen

I copied the old disk (120GB) to the new one (under linux with dd), did a new boot and all seemed to work fine - at least with linux. So I moved and increased some of the existing partitions to use the whole harddisk. After the next reboot I tried to boot the WinXP - after a few seconds came the bluescreen with following error:

STOP: 0x0000007B (0xBACCB528, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)

(only a short flash, followed by an immediate reboot. So I had to photograph it )

--> ok, WinXP doesn't work. I took me almost three days to find out that it wasn't WinXP's fault (ok, windows is always guilty ), even so in the beginning the error message led me into this direction - like EnableBigLba not set. But my WinXP is at SP3 level, so this switch shouldn't be needed anymore (and I think isn't even supported anymore...).
About the second day I repeated the copy procedure, but this time started WinXP first - and it worked fine! So again - Linux - this time only a new partition using the empty space - Windows - and there it was again - the blue screen! So - Linux - removing the partition - windows - and now it worked again.
Now I knew - in principle it would work, even so only up to 128GiB (WinXP does tell this number in it's Harddisk management tool). Hmm, my first thought was 128GiB --> 2^28 --> WinXP only supports the 'old' LBA28 instead of LBA48...
It took me another day of search in the internet to discover that WinXP supports LBA48 but the harddisk had a HPA entry saying that it is only 128GiB in size. BTW. during this time I also tried the Hitachi Harddisk Tool - it said it could change the size from 128GB to 320GB and it would be permanently - but it wasn't. I guess because it didn't deactivate the HPA...

Why can't WinXP do it like Linux and work out of the box for such a problem
I guess somebody with less knowledge in computers wouldn't have succeeded at all

Finally, with the help of hdat2 all works now! And hopefully someone with the same problem finds this thread earlier than me...