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I recently received an 80gig hard drive from my friend's dead dell computer and decided to see if it still worked. I dissected an external USB 250gig hard drive, found a parallel ribbon cable and cannibalized an old power supply for a parallel power cable. I connected the mess together and after fiddling with the jumpers I managed to get my computer to recognize both drives. The main problem I've been experiencing is that my computer will now only recognize 32GB of the 80 in the hard drive (I do not have the jumpers set to limit capacity to 32GB). And it will only recognize both drives when I do have the jumpers set to limit capacity to 32GB on cable select. I do not know what kind of controller is running the interface nor is it written anywhere on the device.
Is what I am doing completely ludicrous or is this possible?
My technical skills are amateur at best so layman's terms would be appreciated.
Thanks.

p.s. sorry if this is a little tl;dr

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Dani AI

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Good DIY effort, — and is on the right track: the interface electronics are a common source of strange capacity and detection behavior. Below is a compact, practical checklist to isolate the fault and safe next steps to try.

Start by testing the bare drive independent of your hacked enclosure. Fit the drive to a known-good IDE port or a simple USB-to-IDE docking/adapter (borrow one if you want to avoid buying). Read the drive model, firmware and SMART info (smartmontools can do this) to confirm the drive reports its native size and identity (smartmontools). If the raw drive shows the expected capacity when attached to a proper interface, the enclosure/bridge is the problem.

If the drive itself reports a reduced size on every interface, check for a Host Protected Area (HPA) or Device Configuration Overlay (DCO) that can hide sectors. Those are configurable by the drive and can be removed, but only after a proper backup; see Host Protected Area and the hdparm manual for detection/removal methods (hdparm man page). Use extreme caution — changing HPA/DCO can make data inaccessible if done incorrectly.

If the drive is fine but the hacked board/enclosure misreports size, look for the bridge chipset ID on the PCB and search its datasheet/firmware notes. Cheap or old USB↔IDE bridge firmware sometimes has translation/limit bugs. Also verify jumpers and cable-select behavior per the Parallel ATA rules (Parallel ATA), and confirm the drive has a proper 12V supply (USB alone will not power a 3.5" drive; see USB power specs).

If troubleshooting is inconvenient, a low-cost, known-good adapter or enclosure will quickly prove whether the adapter is at fault. Always back up important data before running tools that change drive configuration.

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Member Avatar for Greymatter

Update: My computer now recognizes the full size of the HD and has allowed me to format it (though I have only that drive connected with CS jumper).
I would still like some advice on the potential of this endeavor.

Update: It will now only recognize only the 80GB HD even when it is set to slave, and the larger drive is set to master with slave present.
I am very confused.

Member Avatar for hughv

This is the kind of crazy project I've tried in the past. I,m sure you realize there are many better ways to get this drive working, like spending $20.00 on an external case, or installing the drive internally.
That said, I believe you are correct about the controller being the issue.

Member Avatar for Greymatter

This is the kind of crazy project I've tried in the past. I,m sure you realize there are many better ways to get this drive working, like spending $20.00 on an external case, or installing the drive internally.
That said, I believe you are correct about the controller being the issue.

Yeah, this was all done on a whim just because I had the free drive, my goal was to spend no money on this. If I'm going to spend any money on a hard drive I'll just go buy a new one and never think about it again. I've also run out of drive bays in my PC.
Stupid technology.

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