• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Deleting a missing partition

beatle

beatle

Diamond Member
On my backup server (see duallie in sig) I use a JBOD/Spanned volume setup to easily address the space I have. All of my drives are "upgraded" to dynamic disks, save the scsi drive which is still basic. My 180GXP is split: 10 gigs for OS and programs/30 goes into the spanned volume. It used to be 4/36, but I needed more space, so I fdisked the drive and reloaded windows. The problem is that I have a "missing" disk showing up in disk manager: it's my old 4 gig system partition. I cannot reactivate the disk and it won't let me delete it because it thinks it's a system disk. Is there a file that I can edit in safe mode or something I can do to remove this missing partition? It's not affecting performance or space, but it's annoying. :disgust:
 
Does this missing disk have a designation? If so, possibly you could find that in the registry and alter or delete it.

Does Disk Manager list another system disk for the 10G partition?
 
For me the wierd part is you managed to get your system drive converted to dynamic in the first place.

If you're feeling brave:
dskprobe (diskprobe) is part of the 2000 resource kit.

1. Start dksprobe
2. Select drives, physical drive
3. Double click physicaldisk0
4. Hit 'set active', hit 'ok'
5. Select Sectors, read. Leave the default 0 & 1 in there and hit read.

6a. (not so brave) post a screenshot of what you see here.
6b. (super brave) if you have a 42 in the 3rd pair on line 01C0 AND you don't have any form of hidden first partition (from dell or compaq) then ....sorry changed my mind, not posting, do step 6a instead...not paying the $245 to MS to fix you if it blows up...

 
Originally posted by: Smilin

6b. (super brave) if you have a 42 in the 3rd pair on line 01C0 AND you don't have any form of hidden first partition (from dell or compaq) then ....sorry changed my mind, not posting, do step 6a instead...not paying the $245 to MS to fix you if it blows up...
Click to expand...

Ok, you lost me there... if I lose the data on any of my drives, I won't cry. This is just a backup server, so all my data is already stored on my main rig. What would cost $245?
 
Welp, here's my screenshot of diskprobe's results. This is all Greek to me. I see small OS designations in the right column - Novell, FreeBSD, BSD, Linux...

What were you going to say, but then didn't? It seems like I meet your criteria for step 6b. 😕
 
well.. I don't know what is going on any more then you do but I can tell you what that last sceenshot was of.

The far left row was some sort of addresses in hexadecimal form.

(if you don't know, maybe you do maybe you don't. 🙂
we normall count in base-ten or in decimal form:
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 (also remember programmers count starting from zero, zero is the first number)

Computers count in binary:
0 1
If you want to count higher then 1 then you have to add a zero, just like we have to add a zero to count above 9.
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13...
0 1 10 11 100 101 110 111 1000....

In hexadecimal we count in base-16 or
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 a b c d e f 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 1a 1b 1c 1d 1e.... etc etc.

Since 16 is a multiple of 2(a bit) and 8(a byte) it's easiest to see binary data in this form, since otherwise it would be a bunch of one's and zero's

The far left row probably corrisponds with what sector of the disk you looking at.

The middle row is the actual data on the disk (ones and zeros) but in a convenient hex format.

The far right row is the binary data represented in ASCII code. ASCII is the standard for encoding text in PC hardware. A sequance of 1's and 0's is what makes up each letter you see when you type stuff out in plain text.
 
I know I could always low level format the drive and/or fdisk it again, but I'd rather not reinstall Windows and back up all my data to the spanned volume again.
 
You're using some sort of modified boot code. It normally ends on the 11th pair on line 0170 but yours is going all the way to the start of your partition table (starts 2nd from last on line 01B0, that 80 there is the start of it and is an 'active partition' marker). Your disk signature (pair 6-12 on line 01B0) has also been overwritten by the boot code. An fdisk /mbr would sort out the boot code probably. Not sure about that disk sig though.

You're showing a 6.2 gig 2nd partition on the drive (it's being ignored, only the first partition is looked at since it's dynamic...all the info for your partitions on disk 0 is stored in the ldm database at the end of each partition). You could try taking out the 2nd partiton from the partition table - zero out all the data on line 01D0. It's a pretty harmless operation in your situation, but I don't think it will do too much. That missing drive is in your LDM database and editing that is beyond the scope of this thread (and my skills hehe). Disk probe will let you write a copy of this sector to file before you start so you can roll back if you fvck up. Just follow the instructions from above to get back to this screen, place the cursor and start typing zeros. When you're ready, hit sector | write and yes through the warnings, leave the default 0 for the sector to write to. Be careful not to touch the 55 AA at the end of the sector. Zero that thing out and run an fdisk /mbr and it will give you a shiney new MBR on a completely zero'd out disk.

edit: sorry I couldn't help more. Your problem is otherwise harmless though so don't sweat it -- just fix next reload.
 
Originally posted by: drag
well.. I don't know what is going on any more then you do but I can tell you what that last sceenshot was of.

The far left row probably corrisponds with what sector of the disk you looking at.

The middle row is the actual data on the disk (ones and zeros) but in a convenient hex format.

The far right row is the binary data represented in ASCII code. ASCII is the standard for encoding text in PC hardware. A sequance of 1's and 0's is what makes up each letter you see when you type stuff out in plain text.
Click to expand...

The far left column is not actually on the disk. It's just there for human reference. The screenshot he gave is of a single sector, 0. You can use disk probe to fool with more than one sector at a time if you tell it to but it's not a wise idea because if you get confused ...D'oh!! Note the greyed out forward/back buttons on the toolbar.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top