sfalco1957 wrote:
Ok, new HD installed, booted and viewing BIOS.. shows a 78GB HDD as the primary hard drive, even thought it is a 320GB drive..
That's what I suspected. It's not your fault. If your computer had been anything other than a Dell with MediaDirect 2 you would have had a successful restore.
Dell MediaDirect 2 is stored in the HPA which can't be seen by any conventional partitioning app. On your old HD it starts at about the 78 GB mark. When you clone or restore an image to a new HD the HPA is created at the 78 GB mark and your HD will apppear as 78 GB in size in all apps.
Special Dell code in LBA-0 and LBA-3 causes the HPA creation so the first thing we need to do is remove this code. Then we need to remove the HPA. Then the HD will show as 320 GB in the BIOS. The next step is to restore (one at a time) the first and second partitions. Forget the third partition. The main thing to remember during the restore is to NOT RESTORE the MBR. Usually we do restore the MBR but this situation is the exception. Restoring the MBR would restore the Dell LBA-0 and LBA-3 and then the HPA would be recreated.
Let's do this in stages. Download CopyWipe for DOS from...
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/copywipe.php
Unzip the file, double click makedisk.exe, accept the defaults and make a CD. New HD in the laptop. Boot from the CD, select Wipe a Hard Drive, BIOS HD, Hard Drive 0, Quick - 1 Pass, etc.
When it has reached about 2% you can press Esc to Cancel. That's enough to zero LBA-0 and LBA-3.
DownloadSeaTools for DOS...
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools/
Burn the ISO with IMGBurn to make a CD. Boot from the CD...
select your HD
Advanced features
Set Capacity to Max Native
Exit
This should have removed the HPA. Check the BIOS again and let us know the size of the HD.
