Damaged HD?

[deuce]

I have this 20 GB HD that is only a year old, and around September it stopped booting. Since then I have tried to get it working in the time I had, but before I had I chance to try everything to save the data and reformat and start over... someone else tried to fix it for me as I didn't have time and they just went ahead and reformatted and clean installed win98 without asking me. It is a 20 GB HD, but now only has 5 GB total on it, and no other partitions. Is the drive damaged and is that why I can't get all of that drive? Partition magic 7 is on it and I have seen no record of damaged sectors found anywhere or any areas being isolated. I think I am going to back up everything and reformat, and hopefully I can get more from it. Do you think that would work?... or is there nothing that can be done? I'm thinking so because if they didn't get more than 5 when they reformatted, why should I be able to pickup the rest? Can I use pm7 at all?

 

[brianF]

What does the bios say the capacity of the drive is ??

Back up what you need.

Remove partition magic

Refdisk the drive removing all partitions, recreate the partitions
Do you get full size now.

As far as that goes if you run fdisk and view partition info what does it say???

 

[Alex Ethridge]

Sometimes, a corrupted partition table cannot be removed by 'standard' methods. It is possible you have a corrupted partition table; but, there are other possibilities, too.

I suggest you use a tiny utility called ZAPART to clear the drive of all partition information. Then set up the BIOS correctly and re-FDisk the drive.

You can get ZAPART from my autoresponder by sending me a mail with H0017 as the subject (those are zeros). You will receive ZAPART back within a half hour with instructions. It is very simple to use.

After running ZAPART, check your BIOS and be sure it is set to AUTO-AUTO on the master drive on the primary controller.

Once that is done, reboot with a Windows startup disk, type FDISK and set up your partitions again.

If this does not work, I would be hard pressed to find anything other than a hardware failure problem.

 

[deuce]

Brian... bios I believe reports as 8444 MB, but I should check.

Also... Alex and Brain, before the last guy working on it reformatted it, it had about 13 GB used, and only showed 18.1GB total. 13 GB then, 5 GB now, equals 18 GB... is it just a coincidence?

 

[Lurker1]

Hi deuce

If the BIOS only shows 8 gig then you will probably need to install a disk overlay program to get the full 20 gigs back. Partition magic won't work with a drive overlay program.

 

[Alex Ethridge]

Drive overlays work; but, should be used as a last resort. Drives with overlays are not as reliable or as stable as drives without them. Personally, I never had a serious problem with a drive overlay; but, I have seen many who did.

If you entire hard disk cannot be seen by your machine, I would recommend a BIOS update over an overlay. However, if your machine has even seen 18-Gigs on that drive at any time before now, the BIOS update is not needed. Most likely, your problem is due to incorrect CMOS settings or a corrupt partition table.

As for the difference between 18.1 and the advertised 20-Gig size, don't worry over that. The manufacturers stretch the truth a lot.

 

[deuce]

As for the difference between 18.1 and the advertised 20-Gig size, don't worry over that. The manufacturers stretch the truth a lot.

That I know about. My 100.0 GB is only 93.6... but what I was talking about was that the drive that was used before and the dirve that is free now is the same as the total for the drive... only that used data isn't on the disk anymore... seemed like it was just a coincidence but I was just going to put it out there. That computer has seen 18 GB before, so it shouldn't be the bios. What should my first option to try be? I am in a bit of a tight spot though with backing up the data. I bought a burner the other day but because of the weekend and the hoilday it won't come until at least next friday. The only other HD I have that is not in use and big enough to back up everything is a 5 GB Fujitisu... and it is a little old. It was made back when Fujitsu's didn't like to give up data... so you can't image it. I have 50 GB left on the 100 that I can use to back it up as well, but this 5GB/18GB drive is for an old compaq, so it has a hidden boot sector that is hard to replicate, unless you image a drive that has it, and it's not like I can copy the boot sector to my HD on the P4. Also, what I want to do is use the 18 (if I can get it back) on a different computer (I'm half way done building it... just waiting for a process that is in the mail) and use the data that is currently on the WD 18 on the 5 GB Fujitsu and put the boot sector and windows on a 2 GB so I can get it back later if I want it. So anyway, I am not sure how I will get everything backed up. I probably will just store it on the 100 GB WD, but it has a different OS and although I know it doesn't matter, I always get alittle edgy when doing it because once I backed up win95 on a win98 drive like that and it clashed and I had to reformat.

 

[Alex Ethridge]

Backing the entire content of the Windows 98 drive to another is a simple process I use frequently in my work as an on-site service tech. I simply make a folder on another drive called Storage and drag everything from the drive to be backed up to the Storage folder.

Provided you have set the Windows Explorer to "Show all files", everything on the source drive will copy except Win386.swp on the source drive, if the source is the active OS. So, exclude Win386.swp from the copy process and you're in.

Win386.swp is the Windows swap file.

Personally, there is a trick I do before I copy the drive. I set the virtual memory to C drive and its size to 200 megs Min and Max. That moves the swap file to the root of C instead of C:\Windows. This makes it easy to select all on C and then exclude Win386.swp by holding the Ctrl key clicking once on it.

Drag and drop is easy after that.

 

[deuce]

Yeah that is what I do. I'm actually going to use three HD. The 100 I am backing up to... the 5/20 I am backing up... and the 5GB Fujitsu I will use as the primary master OS. I do it that way so then I can just drag and drop everything into a temp folder and not have to worry about copying files currently in use by windows and so having to uncheck them, ect. The only reason I said I am edgy doing it with 2 different OS is I had a bad experince for some reason a while ago. I still do it quite often though... but with a wing and a prayer on the side, even though I know it works ok.


I meant what should my first option be in terms of what to try to do, such as leaving the drive overlay till the last resort.