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I recently purchased few Intel 320 series 300gb. Some show correct available space, 279.39GB. However, some of them show 239.20GB is available.

I tried "clean" commend in Diskpart, also tried wiping all the partitions in Linux Mint.

Can it be a HW issue and nothing can be done?

Or

Can someone help? :P

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  • Are they brand new or Refurbished and have you looked at the Smart data to see usage statistics?
    – NetworkKingPin
    Commented Apr 13, 2016 at 8:47
  • @NetworkKingPin They are from eBay, used, and Intel SSD Toolbox shows 100% life left, and crystaldisk info shows under 20,000 hrs of usage. Could you let me know what "Smart Data" you are referring to? Thanks!
    – Rok
    Commented Apr 13, 2016 at 9:21
  • Try this tool to show you more data HDDScan It should allow you to get more info. Also when you come to a conclusion ask the seller what could be the problem and if they were checked before he sent them.
    – NetworkKingPin
    Commented Apr 13, 2016 at 9:46
  • @Rok probably preserved for firmware/controller tasks and it vary between drives firmware. If so, you need to check and update the firmware first. Then try to reset that space to make it similar to the other drive using Hdat2 tool.
    – iSR5
    Commented Apr 13, 2016 at 10:07
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    @Rok I suggest you contact the seller that you bought the drive with the issue and return it if possible, because it might be manually configured or has some hardware issues since you bought it as used. I wouldn't suggest you try to fix it because you don't know if it has any other issues other than this issue. Plus, buying used stuff from eBay is always risky, especially when it comes to electronics. that's my opinion.
    – iSR5
    Commented Apr 13, 2016 at 12:20

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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The Intel 320 series SSD drives support the SET MAX ADDRESS command which means the previous owner may well have reduced the space available to the OS via some utility (e.g. hdparm).

Here's the relevant excerpt from the 320 series specifications:

Host Protected Area Command Set

The best way to recover this "lost" space is to boot a Linux Mint DVD/USB Key (so that the attached SSD drive is not in use) and execute the following command in Terminal:

sudo hdparm -N p# /dev/sdX

Where # is the number of sectors you want to make available to the OS, and sdX is of course sda/sdb/sdc as appropriate. In your case, the maximum number of sectors will be 586072368 (this is also in the specs):

User Addressable Sectors

WARNING the above command will likely wipe any existing data on the drive. Also, once you execute the command, fully shut down the PC so that the drive properly resets itself. Then do a CLEAN command in Diskpart and finally partition/format/install Windows/whatever.

SECOND POSSIBILITY Unlikely, but you may have been sold counterfeit drives. But honestly I haven't heard of counterfeit Intels.

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  • Very Useful for the future sounds like this may help him out.
    – NetworkKingPin
    Commented Apr 15, 2016 at 4:23
  • This is a very good answer. I checked on intel s3700 and everything works.
    – snex
    Commented Jan 10, 2020 at 2:13

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