Recovering Secret HD Space

An anonymous reader writes "Just browsing hardocp.com and noticed a link to this article. 'The Inquirer has posted a method of getting massive amounts of hard drive space from your current drive. Supposedly by following the steps outlined, they have gotten 150GB from an 80GB EIDE drive, 510GB from a 200GB SATA drive and so on.' Could this be true? I'm not about to try with my hard drive." Needless to say, this might be a time to avoid the bleeding edge. (See Jeff Garzik's warning in the letters page linked from the Register article.)

Re:Uh, no

[Froggert]

No you fool, don't tell them yet! This is all part of my incredibly ingenious plan to get all the script kiddies and spammers in the world to follow these instructions to "enlarge" their three inch hard disks and corrupt all of their data in the process. Nobody remotely knowledgeable about computers would ever believe this, and nobody who knows nothing about computers would possibly attempt to do this. Who does this leave? Yes, the script kiddies and spammers. Now it's back to Plan B, sharks with frickin' laser beams on their heads.

Re:How? Reliability?

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM *DEATH*star? ...

I wouldn't worry... thouse drives couldn't be any less reliable :)

Re:What *idiot* dared to post this on /.?

[WIAKywbfatw]

Ah, properly vetted articles. The holy grail of Slashdot readers.

Enlarge your HardDrive

[thefatz]

Gain upto 300-600 more gigs. Your lover will be happy. Risk fre.....wait....lol.

Sorry.

Damn.

[DAldredge]

Not only do US programmer have to compete against programmers in other countries, but now we have to compete againts the Undead?

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!

Re:yeah right.

[silvaran]

Some drives are known to short stroke their platters.

Is that what kids are calling it nowadays?

Everybody that tries this

[Sivar]

Be sure to use similarly advanced techniques to "defraggle [datadocktorn.nu]" your hard drive.

I thought this was going to be helpfull

[Zakabog]

I saw the article title and I was very excited. I've bought many hard drives, and just recently I bought a 160 gig drive (was like $80 too after a mail in rebate, Fry's I love you...) and was about to buy a 250 ($110 after rebate, Fry's, still love you.) But then I figured, well if I do buy the 250, it's going to be able to hold around 200 gigs, and for some reason 50 gigs will be gone without a trace. I think there's 30 gigs missing on my 160 too, I've noticed this on a lot of drives (as drive sizes go up, so does the missing space.)

I thought this would actually let you use up that lost space somehow, you did buy the drive, it should contain the space, but it doesn't. RAM is just the opposite, you buy 512, it has 560 or so, well any ram I bought did. Anyway, is their a way to recover this lost space? Is their something I'm doing wrong? It seems to be worse in linux (but I heard that's cause it reserves space for root to access.)

Re:Simple corruption

[myowntrueself]

Oh come *on* people.

Almost every slashdotter wants to find new and interesting ways to hose their data.

Its only natural.

Re:I call

[flacco]

No way in heck can you increase the amount of storage a HDD has so drastically. I mean, the physical disks can only hold so much, and no matter what you do, they arent going to magically double or triple.

unless the disks were secretly, specifically designed this way.

for example, for the benefit of spooks who want the device to maintain a rolling log of disk data for some period of time after the unsuspecting user thinks it's been deleted/reformatted/security-wiped.

I'm suprised

[Zakabog]

I'm suprised with all the comments from people who DON'T want to try it out. This is SLASHDOT! Come on don't we all have dozens of 512MB hard drives? Or even some old 10 gig drive that you found in some computer while you were dumpster diving?

Re:What *idiot* dared to post this on /.?

[Kiryat Malachi]

timothy.

OK, I think I figured it out!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

The guy who wrote this article is definately the same guy who is sending the "add 3 inches to your hard disk" SPAM.

Re:witnesses reported UFO sightings

[kfg]

So you're saying that, much like the UFOs, this really is true but it's being covered up?

Hey, you don't really believe that story that the extra disk space is really just a weather balloon, do you?

KFG

Gigabytes Song

[unknown_host]

(A.K.A The Song of Failing Disks)

Ten little gigabytes, waiting on line
one caught a virus, then there were nine.

Nine little gigabytes, holding just the date,
someone jammed a write protect, then there were eight.

Eight little gigabytes, should have been eleven,
then they cut the budget, now there are seven.

Seven little gigabytes, involved in mathematics
stored an even larger prime, now there are six.

Six little gigabytes, working like a hive,
one died of overwork, now there are five.

Five little gigabytes, trying to add more
plugged in the wrong lead, now there are four.

Four little gigabytes, failing frequently,
one used for spare parts, now there are three.

Three little gigabytes, have too much to do
service man on holiday, now there are two.

Two little gigabytes, badly overrun,
took the work elsewhere, now just need one.

One little gigabyte, systems far too small
shut the whole thing down, now there's none at all.

It works!!!!

[rock_climbing_guy]

I j5st tried thiJ out wi_* my MAXTOR 80YB 7&00 RPM hard dFDve. It's ju7t amazifg; it says that I have over 200 GB unfoFGatted, with almosF 190 GB for3atted. I'm sure that the risks are all overstated. Who needs Gga3 for error correcGion and bad blocks, or whatever. It's just paranoia. If you want mor6 stFrage space, go try this out right sgrGREG][2fFS3g4

Don't believe them

[ObviousGuy]

I'm here to protect you from the terrible secret of space.

Re:Uh, no

[DrSkwid]

fdisk (on a Windows machine - I dunno the Linux equivalent).

er, fdisk

Re:I'm suprised

[rock_climbing_guy]

Or even some old 10 gig drive that you found in some computer while you were dumpster diving?

Thanks for sharing with us how you like to spend your spare time!!!

Great.....

[Lord_Dweomer]

Great......now I can expect spam that reads:

Increase your harddrive size by 150mb! Women don't like men with small harddrives. Trustmeeee and click this blind link and giveme your CCnfo and I promise thisvkpj&$(*)#Hf89h0eq2987y

I HAVE seen UFOs

[Lord Kano]

And not even I believe this one.

LK

Re:Uh, no

[antic]

I initially misread your post as "enlarge their three inch hard dicks". From the crap that my mail server blocks, the spammers have been trying to enlarge their three inch hard dicks for a long time...

Re:Simple corruption

[eggstasy]

I once made a floppy that reported its size as 4 gigs, back when hard drives couldnt even reach 1.
It's pretty easy to set your hard drive to whatever "size" you want it to be... just dont expect it to work properly :P
Having said that, there were a few proggies floating around back then that could make your floppies slightly larger by formatting them with a weird, non-standard configuration.
You could do wonderful things with them, from 1.7-1.8 meg floppies, that were a bit slower and less reliable, to some magic 1.22 meg format that mysteriously made my floppies faster.
Ahh, those were the days ;)
I have very *ahem* fond memories of spending the whole day formatting and copying Civ2 to 96 floppies... ouch!

Darwin

[Lord_Dweomer]

I personally can't wait to come back to this story a bit later when people have had a chance to try this out. Seriously, it'll be like reading the Darwin Awards for computers!

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it works.. I just tried it and it seems to b##0"#,##0;\-""#,##0 ""#,##0.00;\-""#,##0.00# ,##0.00;]\-""#,##0.005 * ,##0.00;]\-""#,##0.005 * ,##0.00;]\-""#,##0.005 *

article summary

[ocularDeathRay]

Ok.. so what you do is you heat up your soldering iron and you burn a small hole in the corner of the disk. This will cause the bios to detect massive amounts of free disk space. and best of all... it is completely reliable storage!

How to do this in Linux

[Rufus211]

mkfs.ext2 /dev/hdb1
mkdir /mnt1
mount /dev/hdb1 /mnt1
mkdir /mnt2
mount /dev/hdb1 /mnt2

Tada! now when you `df` you'll have twice as much total space!

Fun with Norton

[NanoGator]

I played a practical joke on my friends back in my high school programming course. Back in the DOS days, Norton had a tool where you could mess with the data stored on the FAT table. I came to school with a floppy that had reported it had over a gigabyte of free space. Heh it was funny watching their eyes get big. Sadly, there were no females around to demonstrate my technological prowess.

Re:Simple corruption

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just a method of corrupting your partition table so the same disk sectors appear more than once. If you try this, don't ask Symantec for help afterwards.

This is actually a great technique, as long as you don't want to read your data after you've written them.

Re:I call

[Ohreally_factor]

I've been getting faster rotational speeds since I opened up my HD and removed the "dummy" platters.

Re:Simple corruption

[The Clockwork Troll]

I'm a Ghost developer. This is just a method of corrupting your partition table so the same disk sectors appear more than once.

I've used Norton Ghost; are you claiming prior art?

IT WORKS, I tried it and confirmed FULL CAPACITY.

[Anonymous Coward]

All of my IOMeter tests ran successfully, and the speed gains were IMPRESSIVE. I will no longer be ripped off by the "man". I am repartitioning that ST-225R now (keeping fingers crossed for 1G capacity!)

I put a mod chip in my Phat "Type R" and doubled the horsepower (the pineapple shooter exhaust was good for +20BHP and one extra mile of sonic boom!). I put some 104+ TURBO octane booster in the tank too, and a special blend of Slick50/MarvelMysteryOil.

Hopefully this article will mean fewer systems online (most probably infected with MS.Blaster, NetSky, Bagle etc). We can only hope...

Virus ?

[Evil Pete]

Is this the first tech info virus ? Follow instructions to destroy your own HD. Seems like just putting a hammer through it would be easier, but it would probably work with the clueless. Hmmm, yeah not a bad idea I guess in a very twisted way.

Re:I call

[racermd]

Ahhh... The overclocked (overrotated?) Hard Disk. Make sure your platters are perfectly balanced and aligned, though, or risk shattering them all due to rotational discrepancy flow. Use a Sharpie pen for miniscule adjustments to the hyperfluid spindle bearing.

Don't forget to water-cool it, too.

write-only memory!

[Anonymous Coward]

someone dig out the jargon file entry on write-only memory.

This is a great way to get a few TB of WOM

In other news

[sokk]

In other news:
Users report that 486to586.exe actually works.

"It works, it really works", "My machine feels much faster" was some of the comments from the happy users.


Karma whoring: But after some investigation, it was identified as a renamed copy of loadlin.exe :P

You could do the same with 51/4 floppy disks

[jobbegea]

By cutting a small hole in de envelope of a Single Sided (SS) disk you would turn it into a Double Sided disk effectively doubling it capacity. Of course these disk were SS for a reason, they had failed the double sided test.

I would not be surprised if these increases in HD space are due to use of disabled/unsafe disk surface

Re:yeah right.

[PacoTaco]

I've discovered a method to turn a single processor computer into a dual processor machine! First go into the BIOS and turn Hyper-Threading on. Finish booting the system. Now get a hacksaw. Hit reboot and quickly saw the processor in half. Before the system restarts, kill the power. Take the left half of the CPU and put it in the second processor slot. Start the system again and everything should be working wonderfully!

Re:Simple corruption

[Makarakalax]

Or perhaps one of the few times a comment deserves +5?

Re:that looks like a *bad* thing

[pilybaby]

I tried to overclock my monitor by 2" once. I don't reccomend it!

Re:Uh, no

[hayden]

Could also be a misspelling of "Aural density". The measure of the amount of bullshit in any given sentence.

Re:Damn.

[PsiPsiStar]

Compete? Dude, if you don't think you're undead, you've been getting way too much sleep.

Re:Simple corruption

[MrAngryForNoReason]

1.7-1.8 meg floppies, that were a bit slower and less reliable,

You made floppies even slower and less reliable I wouldn't have thought that was even possible. Obviously some kind of WORN file system (Write Once Read Never!)

It's true!

[DeadlyEmbrace]

They are actually able to triple the amount of disk space by using holographic imagery that allows an additional 3 layers of bits to hover precariously above each platter.

Re:damn i hope you are kidding

[Carrot007]

Really?

Personally I thought that the people who sugessted "Mebi" were taken out back and given a good kicking, and the rest of us sane people who understood the word context continued using mega knowing that we meant 1024 when refering to computers.

We also realised that the hard disk manufacturers would continue to use out of context numbers but feel that they may one day have to change due to the ever inceasing discrepency making them look stupid.

But maybe that's just me?

Re:Uh, no

[neiljt]

CDROMs use constant data rate by varying the RPM of the drive depending on where you're located

I can vouch for the fact that the RPM is greater in the heady latitudes of the UK. People living nearer to the equator will experience slightly longer seek times, and I wonder if those in places like Barrow AK & North Norway actually appreciate the extra performance.

Maybe someone from New Zealand or nearby could chime in and verify that there data is read from the drive in the opposite direction.

Re:Uh, no

[MonkeyBoy]

You forgot areole density. That's two per person, unless the carnival is in town.

(Aw crud, maybe four per person. Dictionary.com wants to call part of the Iris an areole...)

Jesus Christ!

[esme]

April first is coming earlier and earlier every year.

-esme

Re:How? Reliability?

[MrFreshly]

Yeah, and further...If Western Digital HAD a 510GB drive, you can bet your ass they'd market it and not keep it crippled!

That'd be the biggest single consumer drive on the market.

Re:Uh, no

[SmackCrackandPot]

It's a mis-spelling of oreo-density; how many portions of breakfast cereal you can get in a single serving.

Re:Uh, no

[Luigi30]

Aureal Density is how bad your speakers sound.

Re:Uh, no

[fireman sam]

Being from Australia, yes, we do read the information backwards. And it is stored in memory backwards. For example, lets say I have the number 0x2244 it is written on the disk as 0x4422. And, even more amazing is if we look at the number 0xffff, it can sometimes be read backwards, forwards, or randomly, giving the values:
0xffff, 0xffff, and 0xffff. But, we get no errors.

(Hear are some replys for you consideration:
- Isn't Australia part of New Zealand?
- Isn't New Zealand part of Australia?
- That is the lamest piece of shit I have ever
read.

How it works

[FraggedSquid]

You get rid of all the zeros, the 1's take up much less space so you can fit in more.

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

Could be a misspelling of "aureole density," which pretty much describes my data.

and didja know?!

[Asprin]

And didja know you can re-zip all your zip files to make the ONE QUARTER their original size?!?!

/smirks

Re:Anyone remember NaBob?

[egjertse]

Hmm can't remember that one, but these days you can always download the actively developed LZip [sourceforge.net] - a lossy compression program!

It has a non-GPL compliant license [sourceforge.net] though. Pity.

Re:Uh, no

[blackbear]

It could also be "areole density." Which has a rather titillating definition.

Re:Uh, no

[Mr Guy]

Ahem.

-- I thought hard drives in Australia had to be installed upside down.

-- I read your post backwards, you insensitive clod.

-- You must be new around here, in Australia your hard drive reads you.

-- Imagine a beaowulf cluster of Australia bits!

Re:Damn.

[HoppQ]

Not only do US programmer have to compete against programmers in other countries, but now we have to compete againts the Undead?

They program in Ghostscript.

Increase ebay resale value

[smoon]

For sale: P4 1.4GHz, two 3,000,000GB hard drives (6PB (petabyte) total). See below for a screenshot of the hard drive size. This is an unusual item used for secret cryptography research. Hard drives seem to have some sort of encrypting file system. Boots OK but I'm not all that bright so sold as-is. Own a piece of NSA history today!

Even better results

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a 40 GB Western Digital and have successfully written 80 TB to /dev/null on it. But like most clever hacks, there's a trick -- I read the data back from /dev/zero.

Re:I HAVE seen UFOs

[Anonymous Coward]

I HAVE seen UFOs

Me too! Scared me so much I dropped my bong!

Re:Uh, no

[pair-a-noyd]

Aureal density explained.

a high aureal density is those dark nipples and
a low aureal density is those bright pink nipples.

Right?

Aureal units

[Z-MaxX]

You can measure aureal density in nipples per cubic furlong.

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

So you Aussies are all little endian, eh? Figures.

Re:article summary

[No. 24601]

Ok.. so what you do is you heat up your soldering iron and you burn a small hole in the corner of the disk. This will cause the bios to detect massive amounts of free disk space. and best of all... it is completely reliable storage!

So, burn a large hole in the corner of your brain and life will be a lot happier!

I think I know how this works...

[BloodyBuffalo]

I had an idea for increasing the size of your hard drive by on average 50%. See, everything is stored in binary, 0's and 1's. But maybe, just maybe, you could use the lowercase o instead of a 0. Check it out, it's smaller: o0. About 50% as far as I can tell. So use o's instead of 0's and voila, more space.

Re:Uh, no

[AndroidCat]

The Atari ST came out in 1985. Which "way back when" were you talking about? :^P

Re:If it's real....

[Lord Bitman]

Everything is replaceable, the trick is it's not very easily replaceable. I've spent years filling my disks with porn, and to lose all that would be devistating.

Re:Virus ?

[Uninvited Guest]

Wait, can you give me more information on this so called "hammer" approach? How much more storage would I get?

Wasn't there a movie about this?

[SuiteSisterMary]

Remember what happened to Keanu when he tried to use a RAM Doubler [imdb.com] to temporarily increase his storage space?

Re:Uh, no

[rew]

Correct. I know the difference. I also know that some people insist on writing GB for gigabyte, while I write Gb for gigabyte. Now, what is your point again?

It happens everywhere

[rip_1956]

I have a friend who works in a Toyota engine plant. A while age he told me that they began cutting costs by only making 6-cylinder engines, even though the Corolla I purchased was supposed to have a 4-cylinder.

Don't tell anybody, but if you get a couple of extra spark plug wires, and use them to connect the evaporative fuel cannister to the glove compartment, guess what? Now you have 6 cylinders purring in harmony under the hood.

Be aware, though, that it will lower your mileage a bit.

And don't tell your insurance agent. Your rates will go up.

Re:Anyone remember NaBob?

[jafuser]

It has a non-GPL compliant license though.

Best software license ever... =)

(2)

You have the right to an attorney. You have the right to remain
silent. You have to fight for your right to par-tee. This license
may not be revoked, redistributed, photocopied, or discussed without
the express written consent of the parents. All models eighteen years
of age, proof on file. The manager is not responsible for lost baggage.

RAID?

[Pan T. Hose]

This is just a method of corrupting your partition table so the same disk sectors appear more than once.

Are you saying that we could use that space for software RAID1 solution?

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, I thought New Zealand was part of Rohan.

And isn't Australia part of Mordor?

Famous Joke

[The_Dougster]

It's really not too difficult fixing your own hard drive, if the problem is a head crash, or the infamous Seagate "stiction" problem, if you know what to do. You will require #4/0 steel wool, paint thinners, WD-40, a few hand tools, and about 45 minutes.

- First, you need a clean room, so make sure the garage door is closed before you begin. Move those old lawnmower parts off the bench. Disassemble the sealed unit and carefully wash all parts with paint thinners. Bend the read/write heads out of the way, and then disassemble the platter stack.

- VERY CAREFULLY buff the platter surfaces with the #4/0 steel wool. This will remove any existing data, level out any surface defects, and help to redistribute the magnetic media and fill in those pesky "bad sectors" that most drives have.

- Reassemble the platter stack, and using a .015" feeler gauge, bend the read/write heads back to the platter surface, using the feeler gauge to set the gap. This is slightly higher gap than the factory uses, but it reduces the chance of head collisions with any flotsam you neglected to remove.

- Give the heads and platters a good shot of WD-40 and reassemble the unit. If your drive has a filter, replace it with a clean section of gauze pad.

All that's left is to low level and DOS format the drive, and you're back in business. I haven't tried this myself, but my friend's wife's sister-in-law's husband knows a technician that does it all the time....

Re:How smart u are..

[Anonymous Coward]

I happen to work in the processor inducstry

Processors for ducks?

Re:Uh, no

[Brandybuck]

There is both fdisk and disklabel in FreeBSD.

fdisk -- PC slice table maintenance utility

bsdlabel -- read and write disk pack label

Of course, only an insane (or truly desperate) person ever uses these by hand. I had to do this once, and my coworkers called the ambulance because I broke out into a shaking sweat and started gibbering.

Re:yeah right.

[Gunzour]

You have that backwards, don't you? The *right* half of the CPU goes in the 2nd processor slot, not the left half. I made the same mistake the first time I tried this.

BTW, if you get a 2nd full size fan/heatsink instead of cutting the original one in half with the CPU, you can do some massive overclocking of your 'new' dual processors.

"Lowball" speed advisories

[Max Threshold]

Not in Tennessee! When they say 45 MPH, they *mean* 45 MPH, even in my BMW. I think they're trying to kill tourists.

Just use a hole puncher!

[tommck]

All you have to do is use a hole puncher on the side that doesn't have a hole and flip the disk over! Voila! Twice as much space! Gosh... I've been doing this since the early 80s!

Of course, it's hard to find a hole puncher strong enough to get through a hard drive, but I've used a hack saw a couple of times... works like a charm!

Re:Uh, no

[Jaywalk]

spammers have been trying to enlarge their three inch hard dicks for a long time

Really? I thought they only had floppies.

Better Way

[Jexx Dragon]

Since this just corrupts the allocation table, etc, I have developed a better way.

First, collect the platers you pulled out of old useless drives (They are usually being used as coasters or Frizbees).

Next, open up your hard drive in a clean room (use the bathroom, turn on the shower for a while to increase humidity).

Insert old platters into new drive, you may have to wedge them in there, try removing the collars that seperate the platters.

Close drive, and reinsert into computer. You should get several megabytes more then you previously had.

NOTE: The Author takes no responsibilty for any damages and voiding of warrenty that may occour.

It's amazing, Marty!

[Anonymous Coward]

With this technology, I can get 1.21 Jigglybytes!