Weird HDD Issue Win 10 Enterprise - Dell 3430

netstrider

netstrider

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Hello,

I'm experiencing a weird problem with Windows or the Dell machine itself more likely.

  • OS is on a 256GB 2.5" SSD - OEM Windows from the manufacturer.
  • In addition to this SSD there's a 500GB Toshiba 2.5" mechanical drive installed.
  • The Dell BIOS sees the drive as a 500GB drive.
  • When booting into Win 10 only 238GB is visible, even under diskmgmt.msc
  • I have tried formating the disk using diskpart on the machine but still only 238GB is usable.
  • When I insert the drive into another Win 10 PC, it shows a 238GB partition and the remainder as unused within disk management.
  • I clear all partitions using this machine, recreate one large partition and it works fine in this PC.
  • I put the HDD back into the Dell and it shows up as unformatted (unused) 238GB.
  • BIOS is set to AHCI and not RAID.

Not sure what's going on here. Any clue?
 
You might want to use a 3rd party partitioning tool. Disk management in windows is terrible with its options and I have a feeling there's a isolated partition between the 256gb and the rest.
 
seems quite normal for Dell ,i have a 1TB in my laptop but disc management only shows 930 GB.if you take used space away it shows 848 free ,but it shows capacity as 999 558 ....
 
soulie said:
seems quite normal for Dell ,i have a 1TB in my laptop but disc management only shows 930 GB.if you take used space away it shows 848 free
Click to expand...
No, it's not normal to have only 238GB of disk space on a 500GB drive even after formatting with diskpart. It should be around 465GB-ish.
 
netstrider said:
No, it's not normal to have only 238GB of disk space on a 500GB drive even after formatting with diskpart. It should be around 465GB-ish.
Click to expand...
are you saying its on the 500 drive ,ok no thats not normal ,format it with linux or xp or on another machine and try again .unless the drive is damaged .
 
Okay so here's what happens on the Dell with Disk Management (click on images to enlarge).

diskmgmt.png

This is through the Dell and diskpart.

diskpart.png

This is file explorer on the Dell.

explorer.png

This is using AOMEI partition manager on the Dell.


aomei_disk.png

Okay, and this is inserting the same HDD into a completely different PC.

different_pc.png
 
Anyway, it leads me to believe there's something in the BIOS or such which allows the Windows on the Dell to only see a portion of the disk but I'm not sure what.
 
netstrider said:
Anyway, it leads me to believe there's something in the BIOS or such which allows the Windows on the Dell to only see a portion of the disk but I'm not sure what.
Click to expand...

maybe do a firmware upgrade ?
 
netstrider said:
Anyway, it leads me to believe there's something in the BIOS or such which allows the Windows on the Dell to only see a portion of the disk but I'm not sure what.
Click to expand...
just out of interest what does bios say if you check it .it may have been initialised to a wrong partition table
 
soulie said:
just out of interest what does bios say if you check it .it may have been initialised to a wrong partition table
Click to expand...
BIOS just lists the physical disk. I have upgraded the BIOS and disk firmware is busy upgrading now so hopefully that resolves the issue.
 
Finally!

I get about two of these weekly and have never seen this before. I got three right here, and none gave the same symptoms.

Anyway, thanks for the assistance.
 
netstrider said:
Finally!

I get about two of these weekly and have never seen this before. I got three right here, and none gave the same symptoms.

Anyway, thanks for the assistance.
Click to expand...
Wait, so what was the solution? I'm very curious to know how this was resolved since I've never seen an issue like that before.
 
I would also like to know?

From the messages you did a BIOS update?

If a BIOS update was needed I fear what else is wrong.

If firmware on the disk was the problem, I would never trust that disk.
 
Totempole said:
Wait, so what was the solution? I'm very curious to know how this was resolved since I've never seen an issue like that before.
Click to expand...
The BIOS update did the trick initially but I upgraded the disk firmware anyway.

Dell Diagnostics returned no errors. It usually spits out an error with a xxxx-xxxx code which, when relayed to them they will replace whatever is faulty.

They are replacing the OS drive because I struggled with that initially as it would not install the OS at all.

I took it out and converted the OS drive to GPT and it worked and the OS was installed.

Even so, and even after resetting BIOS to default the supplementary drive then had issues.

The end user or systems integrator must have done something to screw it all up.

Many of the companies to whom we distribute have end-users that intend to install their own version of Windows and they sometimes put the SATA operation mode to RAID instead of AHCI or so on or the 2032 battery is dead and settings revert preventing anything feom booting because the time is too far back.

None of the usual worked in resolving this issue. Windows was even installed on the secondary drive in this case so they messed around with it.

Even then, the machine shipped with the 256GB SSD and 500GB mech drive and was working.

So that is why I am surprised that I needed to update things to get it working as per factory.

I see these kind of things often and this has not happened before.

The Dell machines are OEMed and shipped with a specific Windows as distributed by the OEM for the sole purpose of being a 2 or 4 monitor monitoring workstation.

I have since relayed to Dell that the OS drive no longer needs replacement. It seems the drive has shipped already so I'll see when they collect it.

It is due to be delivered tomorroe (24h service).
 
It seems like it wants to make the second disk the same size as the ssd, almost like a latent raid setting in bios.
 
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