As can be seen in the attached slice of Disk Manager, I've got a harddrive that beats out even Seagate's new 750GB harddrive for capacity. Unfortunately, it's really a Maxtor 200GB with a problem. Somehow it's come to think of itself as a 2048GB drive with three partitions defined, and a bunch of unallocated space at the tail end (just beyond the actual 200GB end).
Is there a way to correct this without having to destructively FDISK the drive? There's nothing on the first two partitions, but I have a bunch of backups on the third partition that I don't want to lose. I can still access them, but other operations against the harddrive behave peculiarly (chkdsk fails to complete, Acronis True Image reports unreadable sectors when analyzing the partitions, etc.).
And run 6. Low Level format (Full) twice to bury everything on that drive completely, then start again from scratch.
Low Level Format, Quick or Full Test:
!! Warning!! These tests are data destructive, all user information on the hard drive is removed. Maxtor recommends you backup all critical data and remove other hard drives before performing this test. Perform this test only if all other tests have passed (or by direction of Maxtor Technical Support) but the hard drive is still not performing correctly. The quick option is most useful for removing a computer virus, or you are rebuilding the information on your hard drive, and you need a quick erase of the operating system without taking the time involved to perform a full LLF. The quick LLF overwrites a pattern of zeros to the first 300 megabytes, and the last 100 megabytes of the drive. The full LLF overwrites a pattern of zeros to all sectors on the drive. High capacity hard drives take longer to complete. Allow sufficient time to complete the test. Several hours to overnight may be needed.
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