Brand new Hitachi 160gb drives are only 80gb how is this possible???

Just got 40 160gb Hitachi 2.5 sata disks in.

The label ( which clearly has not been tampered with
says 160gb but when I install them they only state
80gb what gives???

Is this some kind of sick joke Hitachi did? I contacted my
supplier and he said they are "clipped to 80gb" I have never
heard or encountered this before.

Anyone have info on this?

 

WHAT? NO IDEA! Did you buy them from ASI? Synnex? who?

 

While they may be "clipped to 80gb" they should labeled and sold as such. I think you need to return them or get a hefty discount.

 

Try here: How to expand a clipped HDD? - Western Digital Community
Let us know if it works.
CAP

 

Clipped??? Tell him you are gonna clip your payment for them..

 

While it isn't that hard to restore these HDDs using the appropriate HPA-modification software, it certainly will be a considerable amount of hassle to do so on 40 hard drives.

I suggest you generate an invoice for an average of .2 hours per drive at your shop labor rate and offer him the option of either refunding that amount or refunding the entire amount, including shipping, as this is a clear case of misrepresentation of product (Provided the "clipped" condition of the drives was not disclosed prior to sale). Make it clear to him that your time is valuable, it is your primary salable asset, and it is unacceptable for him to attempt to foist off his hardware headaches on you, his customer.

mnem
Damn. I sound like some management-type person or something...

 

Thanks for the help guys! I did not pay alot for these so I will give the
software a try and report back with the results. Just had never heard of
a clipped drive before. Why would you want to decrease the size of the HD, afraid they will have TO MUCH storage?!?!?!

 

Sometimes a harddrive has some bad sectors at the last parts. By clipping it, the drive check reports no errors. Simpy reducing the size to prevent data been written on the bad sectors. I also do that sometimes.

 

Basically how AMD made their tri-core cpu's. Took a quad core with one unstable core and locked it. preventing the computer from using it.

 

Well, no.

Corporate IT Departments have to deal with economies of scale; they will have a network server whose sole purpose is to provide a PXE Bootstrap/HDD IMAGE download which is universal for any machines deployed within the corporate network. This image is often keyed to a specific volume size; hence purchasing the drives clipped to say 80GB to prevent having to have a person create partition tables on the drives. They just send them a brand new HDD with a form letter telling them how to do the network image.

I know it seems silly; but in most cases, any important data is stored on the company server so no local storage is even necessary. In many cases, the hardware is essentially a thin client with MS Office; a person's ENTIRE PROFILE is stored on the company server, and they can log into ANY PC on the network and everything follows them.

You and I are used to dealing with one or two or a dozen machines configured the same; down here in San Antonio for example, USAA has 22,000 people working at the same time on the same campus EVERY DAY. Now think about trying to manage THAT in a timely fashion... no way in he11 you're gonna do an OS load the way we do it here, when you may have 80 of them that need to be done on any given day.

This is why these seemingly strange things happen.

mnem
Corporate IT? It's a whole 'nuther world, son.

 

Makes perfect sense now. Once I get it fixed I will report back with the results.

Thanks for all the tips/help.