500g HDD now showing only 100mb

[protoolsuser]

I have been having a hell of a time with this new computer build. Reinstalled pro tools after finally getting everything running smoothly again and now my HDD crashed it is only showing 100mb and is a westerd digital caviar black 500g hd...any ideas?

 

[LiquidSnak]

Is this your only hard drive? where is it showing 100mb? D=

Is it a drive that windows was installed on previously?

 

[protoolsuser]

it is showing it when i try to do a clean install of win 7 i deleted the partition and tried to make a new one...i have another HD with my acronis backups on it...it was my OS HD

 

[Night Hawk]

I think Liquidsnak was asking if that was the only drive since you have both WD Black edition 640gb and 1tb drives listed in your system specs without any mention of a 500gb drive being present.

From the problem description the C primary simply vanishing would point to a MFT being trashed leaving a large gap of unallocated drive space or the primary was deleted somehow like a failed attempt to resize it?

That can happen easy enough! When removing the 7 RC second primary from an older XP build the original XP primary decided to take a walk! Suspecting possible problems and finding out the drive had bad sectors when first bought new(Hitachi) another same size(WD) saw a clean install and files recovered to the replacement otherwise thought to be lost for good.

For a fresh primary on a new build that still would seem a bit odd to have 7 running and then nothing?

 

[protoolsuser]

i mistyped i meant the 640g...i am running memtest86 on the machine right now, probably not related but i having memory problems all week....already have 8000+ errors on first pass, looks like i have to send it back...i gave up on the HD i just am going to wait for replacement memory to come in and start fresh....this build has been such a headache!

 

[Night Hawk]

Are you sure the memory is bad or mismatched for the board? That one came up as a surprize when going through the user manual which sounded a different tune from the Gigabyte "recommended list" as far as memory. The list shows 1.9v memory while the manual called for 1.5v-165v!

Once you get the replacement drive in you have the option for not seeing the 100mb partition if you don't want it. That's simply a new separate partition holding the boor files and BCD store rather then seeing the boot files at the root of C and a hidden "boot" folder tucked away there as well to keep that part separate from the rest of the folder you have and avoid any accidental deletions apparently being the apparent MS thinking for it.

Up until the memory replacement required seeing a another clean install on the new build at the time I always had the drive prepartitioned and formatted simply avoiding the 100mb to start with. Removing it afterwards can possibly see the same results of trashing the 7 partition table which is what you may have seen without the drive being at fault.

Before returning the drive try the WD LifeGuard diagnostics tools on it. WD Support > Downloads > SATA & SAS > WD Caviar Black