by Alex » Tue Oct 10, 2006 2:26 pm
As the complete paritioning information is stored in the first sector of the disc, zeroing this first sector would give you back your entire 320GB, though HDClone cannot do that (would be an excellent use for a Disk Editor...)
Still I don't understand why Windows doesn't see the additional 170GB. Have you checked in the computer management console? (Start|Run...|compmgmt.msc, then select "drive management", where every hard disk installed should be listed, together with the unallocated space, i.e. your missing 170GB ). Windows Explorer (or "My Computer") won't show the remaining space unless it's formatted and entered in the partition table.
In your case (if the thing above does not help at all and you really want to return the new drive to it's previous state) use some free disk editor tools and overwrite the first sector of the disc with all zeros. In this case make sure you write on the first sector of the disc, not on the partition (a windows-based tool should offer you both). The first sector of the Partition usually bears the name of the filesystem stored on it (sc. FAT12, FAT32, NTFS ... ), so if you find these, don't overwrite it (it would have no effect on the partition table). The first sector of a disc should have some strings in the form "Operating System not found..." or a similar message, which is output by the Computer, if the partitions lying behind it do not contain an OS...
hope this helps (a bit),
Alexander