HD compression?

[Fabio]

I am trying to install windows. I've tried, 98, 98se, and XP. I fdisk a 10gb HD (maxtor) to one partition and format. When I go to install windows and it says it is going to run scandisk it says that it detects some disk compression or caching on the HD and recommends you abort. I tried to continue anyways but eventually the install crashes and will not work.

Anyone know what the hell it is talking about? I am not running any compression or caching program on the HD (atleast that I know of).


Any ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Fabio

 

[JustinLerner]

My guess . . .

If you were able to format properly and successfully with fdisk and then dos format, then you probably have some old low level driver on the drive which is incompatible with the newer OS's but which may have been necessary on an older motherboard to enable the whole drive to be used as one partition.

These programs are like EZ-BIOS, Maxblast, and others from Ontrack, Maxtor/Quantum, IBM etc.
It's better to uninstall these low level BIOS than to upgrade them. To uninstall these you need to get the same program to uninstall them or a newer, supercedign version of EZ-BIOS or Maxblast or whatever. They usually have the ability to overwrite the older version. Then you can disable and then remove the newer version.

If this is not the problem and you properly fdisked and formatted, the problem is probably that some compression still exists, in which case you need a utility from the HD manufactuer to overwrite the entire drive with zeroes and then re-fdisk and reformat.

 

[bruincal]

To anyone having problems with their hard drives, I always recommend that they go to the manufacter's site (www.maxtor.com) and download their diagnostic software (MaxBlast, I think). It creates a boot floppy that will thoroughly check the disk for errors and also will access the SMART feature to tell you if your hard drive is failing.

It might be a physical problem with the drive; it might not be. But its good to double-check just in-case. I believe there's also the option of restoring the drive to the state it came from the factory, so that should help.

 

[Fabio]

Well, I got maxblast and ran the low level format, then re-fdisked and formatted. Still no go. Here is the exact message I am getting:


"This version of MIcrosoft Scandisk will work only with MS-DOS version 5.0 and later.

Setup found a compressed volume or a disk cache utility on your computer. Quit setup and check your compressed volume with your disk compression software or remove the disk-cache utility. Then run setup again.

If you have already done so, press ESC."


WTF is this? I have never had this problem before. The HD has nothing on it, what compression is it referring to?

 

[Zepper]

What disk are you booting from to fdisk and format your HD?
At the A:> prompt, type: VER <Enter> to see what DOS version is on that disk. The utilities you use must match the ver. of the disk you boot with (unless they are 3rd party). It always works best to use a disk formatted from Win98 and using the DOS utilities that came with that ver of Win (fdisk, scandisk, format, etc.) or 3rd party utils. Older versions of DOS and (I think) Win 95 put one or two files needed for MS disk compression schemes on there-- they are hidden/system files so you have to use ATTRIB first to get rid of them. They are DBLSPACE.BIN and DRVSPACE.BIN. This may be what they are seeing.
A few sites that have useful boot disks and tools (best if you are VERY familiar with DOS BATch file programming to get the most from these) :

Ultimate Boot Disk

Boot Disk

Nu2.Nu-Modboot

Good luck.
.bh.