Hard Drive Issue – Seagate 1.5TB Shows Only 500GB Size Fix

hard drive

I have 14 Seagate ST31500541AS drives, and one them started reporting only 500GB size instead of 1.5TB. This means that both in the BIOS it shows only 500GB, and both in my linux every tool (fdisk, blockdev etc) show the smaller size.

Please note that this is not a partitioning bug.

Does anyone have an idea how to fix it? Why does it happen? How can I prevent it in the future? Is it a firmware bug?

Thanks.

Best Answer

I have downloaded SeaTools from http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools/seatooldreg (v2.13b (Graphical), ISO CD-ROM Image) After booting the downloaded iso image, I have selected "set drive capacity to MAX" from the Advanced menu, and voilá, it works... the drive reports the expected size of 1.5TB again!

I'm still not happy though that something like this happens, and it would be still interesting to know why, and how could I avoid it.

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