Hard Drive lost 75% of capacity

[RichTea08]

I have revived an early G4 MacMini for use as a starter media server. It was reluctant to startup after some months (years?) unused but after using disc utility and Disk Warrior it has revived.
However in the process it only has 63.23 GB showing on the HD. The HD is a WD Scorpio Blue WD3200BEVE PATA and shows 320GB on the label and the spec sheet. Currently running 10.4.11 as I thought a more contemporary OS might help.
Can anyone shed any light on what is going on please?

[GavinBKK]

Shows 320Gb on what label?

Has the drive been partitioned?

Open Disk Utility: Applications>Utilities?Disk Utility

Take a look in the Sidebar on the left and tell us what is listed there.

[RichTea08]

The label is the WD label on the outside of the hard drive case clearly stating this is a 320GB drive.
Disk utility shows 63.2 GB WDC WD3200BEVE.
Single partition: Apple Partition Map: MacOS extended journalled
It says S.M.A.R.T Status not supported

Any ideas
Thanks in advance.

[ricede]

320 GB sounds quite large for an early G4 MacMini.
According to the Apple spec sheet
http://support.apple.com/kb/sp65 - this model only had either a 40 or an 80Gb HD. Sounds like it does not support a 320Gb HD. This would maybe account for the anomaly.

[trevor]

Quote: Originally Posted by RichTea08 The label is the WD label on the outside of the hard drive case clearly stating this is a 320GB drive.

The hard drive case? Is this an internal or an external drive?

Quote: Originally Posted by RichTea08 Disk utility shows 63.2 GB WDC WD3200BEVE. Single partition: Apple Partition Map: MacOS extended journalled It says S.M.A.R.T Status not supported

Could we see a screenshot of Disk Utility with this drive selected? Please select the hard drive itself, which will be left-justified in the list, not the partition, which will be indented.

Also, could we see the results of the following commands, copy/pasted into your Terminal?

ls -alOe /Volumes
diskutil list
df -aH
id
echo "done"

Trevor

[DeltaMac]

Although that's true about original specs, the Mac mini does not have a hard drive capacity limitation. Even if that were so, it would be the normal large drive limitation of 128GB.
The part number is also correct for a 320GB W-D hard drive.
And, that would not be an original hard drive for the mini.

I would suggest reformatting the hard drive with Disk Utility, writing zeroes for one pass. That might recover full use of that hard drive
If not, I think you should choose not to trust that hard drive for anything important.

[RichTea08]

Thank you Trevor
The following are the results from the terminal query with my personal details removed.

Last login: Mon May  7 20:47:14 on console
unknown000D935F39DC:~ fred$ 
unknown000D935F39DC:~ fred$ ls -alOe /Volumes
total 8
drwxrwxrwt@  5 root         admin        hidden  170  7 May 20:47 .
drwxrwxr-t  33 root         admin        -      1190  7 May 20:46 ..
drwxrwxr-t  36 root         admin        -      1292  7 May 18:32 MINI MAX System Clone
drwxr-xr-x  10 fred  fred  -       408  7 May 16:53 MINI MAX data
lrwxr-xr-x   1 root         admin        -         1  7 May 20:46 revised -> /
unknown000D935F39DC:~ fred$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     Apple_partition_scheme                        *63.2 Gi    disk0
   1:        Apple_partition_map                         31.5 Ki    disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS revised                 63.1 Gi    disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     Apple_partition_scheme                        *465.8 Gi   disk1
   1:        Apple_partition_map                         31.5 Ki    disk1s1
   2:             Apple_Driver43                         28.0 Ki    disk1s2
   3:             Apple_Driver43                         28.0 Ki    disk1s3
   4:           Apple_Driver_ATA                         28.0 Ki    disk1s4
   5:           Apple_Driver_ATA                         28.0 Ki    disk1s5
   6:             Apple_FWDriver                         256.0 Ki   disk1s6
   7:         Apple_Driver_IOKit                         256.0 Ki   disk1s7
   8:              Apple_Patches                         256.0 Ki   disk1s8
   9:                  Apple_HFS MINI MAX System Clone   67.9 Gi    disk1s10
  10:                  Apple_HFS MINI MAX data           397.6 Gi   disk1s12
unknown000D935F39DC:~ fred$ df -aH
Filesystem      Size   Used  Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/disk0s3     68G    13G    54G    20%    /
devfs           114k   114k     0B   100%    /dev
fdesc           1.0k   1.0k     0B   100%    /dev
map -hosts        0B     0B     0B   100%    /net
map auto_home     0B     0B     0B   100%    /home
/dev/disk1s10    73G    13G    60G    19%    /Volumes/MINI MAX System Clone
/dev/disk1s12   427G   453M   427G     1%    /Volumes/MINI MAX data

I have a second Firewire drive attached with two partitions.

To avoid confusion the problem drive is a replacement internal drive.

I am not trusting the drive and these enquiries are about trying to see if there is a reason for the problem.

Thanks in advance

[RichTea08]

Sorry, smaller file attached

[RichTea08]

Thank you
I will try the reformat with overwrite.
I have erased and reformatted previously with no significant change, I think the capacity may have changed by a few k.

[RichTea08]

This time there should be a Disc Util screen shot.

[DeltaMac]

Why is the System Clone partition almost identical in size to your internal drive? Was that created BEFORE your formatted your internal, or simply a recent backup?

Try booting to that Clone (bootable, I expect?), Open Disk Utility, and click on the 63.2 line, then the Partition tab and change the Partition Scheme to 1 Partition, and click the Apply button. Does that return the drive to a full (around 300 GB) partition size?

[RichTea08]

Thanks for the suggestion, I have already tried changing the partition size. It is currently a single partition. The system clone size was set at around 60GB as it seemed a sensible size.
The external drive was partitioned and made bootable after the problem was seen with the first drive.

I originally tried to load 10.5 onto the internal drive but there were problems so I reverted to 10.4 which loaded fine. I suspected the 10.5 disc. All disks are generic family packs.

I then formatted the two partition external firewire and copied to the external system clone using Carbon Copy cloner.

Booting from the clone allowed disc utility to be used on reformatting etc.

As I wanted 10.5 I loaded 10 .5 onto the clone. I then copied (cloned) back to the internal so it ran 10.5. In all of this the internal sticks at 63.2 GB.

I have also tried the erase and writing zeros. Disc size is still showing 63.2.

Next step is copying back the 10.5.8 to the internal.

Puzzling eh?

Any other ideas?

[DeltaMac]

Yes
Disk Utility thinks your hard drive is the "63.2 GB". That is, of course, incorrect.
If changing the partition scheme in Disk Utility does not recover any space, you should then also suspect that the hard drive is failing, as something about how it reports its own size is corrupted.
I suspect that it may be unreliable in other ways, too.
Replace your internal hard drive...

[trevor]

Yeah, I agree with DeltaMac--replace that internal drive. I'm not at all sure WHY the drive is reporting so strangely--that's not a typical failure mode at all--but the fact that it is makes me distrustful of it.

Trevor

[macsolver]

Hi,

The only thing that comes to mind is if the HDD has been "clipped" (jumper or software) or had a HPA/DCO set up on it. It is possible that the HDD firmware has been corrupted giving similar effects.

Might be worth doing a factory reset with the WD tool (Windows) and/or installing the firmware (windows again).

All long shots I know, but if you have access to a PC (and a 2.5" to 3.5" ATA adapter) it might be worth trying before binning the drive.

Regards,

Nick

[trevor]

Quote: Originally Posted by macsolver The only thing that comes to mind is if the HDD has been "clipped" (jumper or software) or had a HPA/DCO set up on it.

That's a good thought, but here are the actual jumper settings for this drive:

I don't think that any of those jumper settings would clip the drive. I'm not sure about software clipping--I suspect that would have to be either in the hard drive controller (which doesn't clip the drive in a Mac Mini) or in the drive firmware.

Trevor