• 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.

Partition Magic KILLED 2 hard drives

S

steeban

Junior Member
My 6gig drive got a little full so i bought a 80gig... now I didnt even want the 6gig drive in my case anymore since i got the 80gig. I realized i couldn't boot up off of the 80gig drive even though it had windows 2000 installed on it. The 6gig was Active and the 80gig wasnt. So i got partition magic 7 and set the 80gig drive as "Active" and restarted. Now when i boot up all the drives are detected as usual, then it gets to "Verifying DMI Pool Data..." and under that all it says is "Error!". I tried unplugging and testing each drive individually, I tried resetting my CMOS, nothing works ... How can I save my data???
 
Grr. My internet service sucks. Take out all your hard drives, put the 6gig on the first channel and set to master. Go into your bios, reset to default settings, autodetect your hard drive. Restart. If that doesn't work, restart with the Partition Magic rescue disks. If it sees your partition, set it to active and unhide it if necessary. Make sure it is also a primary partition (it should be). Restart and it should work. Partition Magic is a very useful piece of software and has always worked for me, except for one incident with a brownout. Bastards at the power company....
 


<< except for one incident with a brownout. Bastards at the power company.... >>



Tell me about it. Lost power for about 30 seconds during a partition merge, and when the computer came back, boom. all gone.

But as for your problem steeban, it's just like Luke said - break out the PM rescue disks and undo your changes. If you don't have the disks, you can install PM on another machine and then make them from there.
 
Ok, I'm really frustrated... I just gave up and reformatted the 80gig. I installed windows 2000 professional and then I boot it up. This is what happens.

Verifying DMI Pool Data ..............
Error!

The same thing that happened before. I tried resetting my CMOS again.. nothing. I dont care about my data anymore i just want the drive to be usable...
 
If I read this right, your system was originally set up to boot off the 6gig drive and then ??? you were
using the NT Boot manager to get to the Windows 2000 install on the 80gig drive?

Is the 6gig still attached? Have you tried booting the system with it unattached?

Have you tried booting off the WIndows 2000 CD, and running the recovery console? or using the
FIXBOOT (from the recovery console) tool to repair the boot table on the drive?
 
I've tried everything... booting off just the 80, just the 6... before i reformatted the 80 i used FIXBOOT and FIXMBR... still the same error. i cant boot off of either and i have no idea what to do
 
Did you ever try the Partition Magic rescue disks? They work wonders.

What you'd want to do is boot with those disks, erase *everything*, including all partitions, and do a complete format (with PM, not DOS's format.com). Make sure that your partition is set to active, and reboot.

Also, the friendly folk at powerquest tech support might have some suggestions, assuming you have a serial # to give them 🙂.

feel free to private message me with the results of the above, and I might be able to help you further.
 
Make a boot disk, then find fdisk.exe and put it on the disk, and put ZAP on the disk. Zap.exe contains ZAP.com and a readme file for it.
Boot off of it then do "Fdisk /mbr" to make sure the master boot record is gone. Then do "ZAP 0" to purge the primary master; "ZAP1" for primary slave, and so on. Then reboot, and run the Windows setup.
ZAP gets rid of all the partition and file allocation information; I've found it quite useful to get rid of the remnants of just about any operating system - Linux, Win2k, etc.
 
Sounds like you installed Win2K while the 6gb drive was primary. What happened is that Win2K put its system files on the 6gb hard drive. So when you took it out.. Win2K didnt know how to boot anymore.

What drive has your important data on it? Or does either drive have anything left after everything you did.

But you need to take out the 6gb hard drive only leave the 80gb hard drive. Fdisk and format this 80gb hard drive and then reinstall Win2K.

If you create more than one partition on the 80gb hard drive and decide to add in the 6gb hard drive you will need to change the partitions on the 6gb hard drive so that it wont throw off your drive letter arrangements on the 80gb hard drive.

For example.. all primary partitions will get assigned a drive letter before logical partitions.

So if your 80gb drive is setup as standalone:
C:\ Primary Partition
D:\Logical Partition (Lets pretend you installed Win2K on this partition)

And then you come along and install the 6gb hard drive which is partitioned as 1 full primary partition.
If you install this hard drive as a slave.. it will grab the drive letter D: and make the Win2K partition E: and now your Win2K wont boot up anymore.

So if you decide to use both hard drives with more than one partition on either hard drive then you should set your 2nd hard drive as one full extended partition with only logical partitions created within it. No primary partitions on 2nd hard drive then it wont jump in front of your drive letter arrangement on the first hard drive.

Anyways.. I only posted to confuse you more.
 


<< Make a boot disk, then find fdisk.exe and put it on the disk, and put ZAP on the disk. Zap.exe contains ZAP.com and a readme file for it. Boot off of it then do "Fdisk /mbr" to make sure the master boot record is gone. Then do "ZAP 0" to purge the primary master; "ZAP1" for primary slave, and so on. Then reboot, and run the Windows setup. ZAP gets rid of all the partition and file allocation information; I've found it quite useful to get rid of the remnants of just about any operating system - Linux, Win2k, etc. >>



neat little tool. what else have you got hiding in there? 🙂
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top