Just a quick note on lessons learned while installing an SSD in an old Dell laptop.
The original drive was 80GB, the SSD 120GB.
After cloning the SSD (Samsung Evo 840) claimed it was also now only 80GB, even to Windows’ Drive Manager, Linux’ Disk Utility, etc. There was no way to access the extra 40GB.
It seemed that this was due to the HPA in the drive; so I tried instructions such as http://superuser.com/questions/552833/set-max-address-failed-input-output-error but always received SET_MAX_ADDRESS failed: Input/output error on both a Live USB and a legit Linux Mint desktop machine where the drive was connected to SATA. (I had expected the latter to work.)
In the end, I had to take the drive to a Windows XP PC, and run “HDD Capacity Restore Tool” from http://hddguru.com/software/2007.07.20-HDD-Capacity-Restore-Tool/ which in a few seconds had the problem solved.
I am yet to return to the customer to repeat the process since I didn’t have a desktop PC with me at the time. It is clear now that the problem doesn’t actually happen until the drive is booted in the Dell laptop, and the Laptop’s custom boot code fiddles with the HPA in the drive.
Thanks go to http://www.techsupportforum.com/forums/f16/hard-drive-got-smaller-after-clone-595634.html#post3405099 user fzabkar for clearing up this little mystery which took away four hours of my life 🙂
It remains to be seen if running FIXMBR will solve the issue permanently – will update this post in due course.