I am reviving this topic because a friend of mine now seems to have the same problem. The problem is not identical though: he uses a WD 20EARS drive which only shows 1 TB anymore, instead of the 2TB it should show.
I have already used the Marks HDPARM utility, but it does not seem to work (using a UBUNTU 10.4 Live CD - hdparm version 9.15)
This is what it says:
root@ubuntu:/home/ubuntu# hdparm -N /dev/sda
/dev/sda:
max sectors = 3907029168/14715056(18446744073321613488?), HPA setting seems invalid (buggy kernel device driver?)
And then when I do :
root@ubuntu:/home/ubuntu# hdparm -Np3907029168 /dev/sda
/dev/sda:
setting max visible sectors to 3907029168 (permanent)
SET_MAX_ADDRESS failed: Input/output error
max sectors = 3907029168/14715056(18446744073321613488?), HPA setting seems invalid (buggy kernel device driver?)
What is wrong here? Could this be because this HD is one of those Advanced Format disks?