Partition Nightmare!

[paxman]

I am fixing a friend's computer that recently crashed. It would only boot to BIOS. Anything after just hangs. So after trying to restore the OS, I finally began to just to a flat reformat through WIN XP disc. WIN XP shows the main 80 G hard drive as not partitioned and will not allow me to use it. I boot to a WIN 98 DOS disk and try to run FDISK. No matter what I do, I cannot restore, fix or format the 80 G drive. FDISK starts out saying the drive is corrupt and to restore the partition. When I try to do this, FDISK just hangs in the verifying portion. Interestingly enough, I load WIN XP onto a spare drive and hook up the 80 G as a slave. In WIN XP, it shows the drive in the Hardware/driver section but will not show it in Windows Explorer. Even though XP loaded the appropriate drivers for the 80 G drive, it is invisible to XP! BIOS also shows the drive as installed appropiately.

Any ideas? The 80 G drive is only 6 months old and there is really no reason for it to be trashed. I am guessing it may have a virus on it. How could the partition be destroyed through normal Win XP use? I am just stumped on what to do next. I have tried several third party partition programs (shareware) but none have worked.

Does anyone have any ideas or links to a freeware/shareware program that might help me? I guess I need to know how to make this drive visible again.

 

[JC]

Go to the HD manufacturer's website and download their HD diag tool, check the drive, low-level format it, and try to partition it again.

That's what I would try, hope it helps you.

 

[EeyoreX]

Even though XP loaded the appropriate drivers for the 80 G drive, it is invisible to XP! BIOS also shows the drive as installed appropiately

XP didn't load any drivers for the hard drive. There is no such thing. XP needs drivers only for the hard drive controller, not the hard drive itself.

The 80 G drive is only 6 months old and there is really no reason for it to be trashed.

Doesn't matter how new or old it is. In fact, if a drive is going to go bad, it is most likely to do so in the first 6 months to 1 year.

I am guessing it may have a virus on it.

Probably not.

Any ideas?

First thing is to do is download the diagnostic utility from the drive manufacturer's website. Or use the floppy that came with the hard drive. The drive may be bad. Second, you said the drive was visable in the Devices section, how about the Disk Managment screen? If so, is there a drive letter assigned to any partition(s) that may exist?

[EDIT]Before a "low-level format" (of which the utility does not do anyhow) he should probably see if there are other solutions first.[/EDIT]

\Dan

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

Does it show up under Control Panel \ Administrative tools \ Computer management \ Disk Management?

 

[JC]

[EDIT]Before a "low-level format" (of which the utility does not do anyhow) he should probably see if there are other solutions first.[/EDIT]

Most manufacturer's HD utilities include diagnosis and low-level formatting capabilities. WD, Seagate, and IBM's all do.

And why not? He's ready to fdisk it anyway.

 

[jjyiz28]

Originally posted by: JC

[EDIT]Before a "low-level format" (of which the utility does not do anyhow) he should probably see if there are other solutions first.[/EDIT]

Most manufacturer's HD utilities include diagnosis and low-level formatting capabilities. WD, Seagate, and IBM's all do.

And why not? He's ready to fdisk it anyway.

im thinking he meant that there is no true consumer level low level formatting. low level formatting i think requires bulky machinery to change the servo info on the HD platters. the formatting capabilities you speak of arn't "low level formatting" but instead software overlay

 

[JC]

The utilities' low-level format proggie writes zeros to the entire drive. That's always been enough to erase any screwy partitions for me

 

[jjyiz28]

wrting 0's to HD is not low level formatting. using overlay software is not low level formatting. low level formatting is only done by manufacterers.

 

[JC]

That may be. The point is, writing zeros to the drive gets you close enough to 'factory-fresh'. And some of the HD utilities list it as 'low-level format'.

 

[paxman]

Thanks for the replies.

"Does it show up under Control Panel \ Administrative tools \ Computer management \ Disk Management? "

No it does not show up in Disk Management. It only shows up in the BIOS and in the Device Manager.

I think the drive is dead. I have tried the manufacturer's floppy program. It crashes over and over again. It will however format and work with my other drives.

I have sadly come to the conclusion that this drive is dead. I just don't know what else to do. I would format it, if I could. That is the problem, FDISK crashes, DOS format crashes, XP Disc refuses to see it and ect. I am out of tricks.

Thanks again for the prompt replies --you guys rock!

 

[Dunbar]

Hard drives are cheap, buy one of these.

 

[blazerazor]

True, but some of us are from "Podunk" and like to make things that are dead, alive again.

Im having some trouble with drive too, but honestly think its 'software' can fix. Try looking for Quantum hd support.
Not like support anywhere actually does anything but give you a ip address you forgot.

Yes its amazing how cheap hd space is today compared to just 4 yrs ago.

I know this is stupid, but did you check the jumper settings on the HardDrive? (shot in the dark)

Still broke... send it to me.. I'll make it clock.

 

[paxman]

Yep...tried moving the jumper all around (including no jumper).

I gave it back to my friend to take back to Best Buy. The thing is only 6 months old (stamped 6-03 on the drive itself). It does suck but I have wasted about four hours of my life trying to fix it. I am not wasting another minute....I feel confident that it is just broke!

BTW, my friend told me after the fact, "Ahhh...it was making a grinding noise right before it quit booting up....is that bad?" Now she tells me!

 

[0roo0roo]

fdisk /mbr

?

 

[drag]

Get a linux rescue/OS-on-a-CD cdrom or floppy.

Some suggestions are knoppix, Trinity rescue CD, Tom's Rescue Floppy.


I realy suggest Knoppix, although tomsrtbt floppy is best for this situation. Because if the drive is realy dead or something then at least you can have a workable OS without it.

But whatever.

Boot up with the floppy disk/or CD.

If the harddrive is the primary master it's /dev/hda in linux. (pri. slave = /dev/hdb, sec. master = /dev/hdc, sec. slave = /dev/hdd)

the command is:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda

That will take maybe 15-30 minutes (or more).

This basicly fills the entire harddrive up with zero's from beginning to end. (this is what harddrive utilities incorrectly call a low-level format. It's realy just zero'ing out a harddrive).

This will erase you MBR, your partition information, everything and completely wipe the drive.

Wipe it clean, bring it back to a factory-new setup.

You probably only need to let it run for a couple minutes, though. Just hit the key combo "ctrl-c" to kill it and then reboot. All the MBR and partiton information is stored at the beginning of the harddrive.

(PS this is also a great test for damaged or dying harddrives. The only error reported should be at the end when the dd program reaches the end of the drive. And that takes a long time, since you would be writing a 80gig file of zeros to the drive. A error during the command can indicate a damaged platter or dying HD. It it's repeatable, especially on the same sectors then you know it's a bad disk.)

Just think of this as fdisk /mbr on steriods.

FYI:
For those with security issues and HD's

Do this
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hda
and
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda

a few times and it should make the data completely unrecoverable. (well as much as it CAN get...)

 

[0roo0roo]

or you could just type fdisk /mbr to erase the master boot record.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
or you could just type fdisk /mbr to erase the master boot record.

That doesn't erase/fix the partition information, or actually format the MBR, or tell if the harddrive is messed up physically or not.

All it does is delete the part of the MBR that dos uses. Lots of times after fdisk /mbr the MBR will still be messed up (or occasionally infected with a virus).

After all, if your going to do something you might as well do it right.

 

[Dreadogg]

lets call it a lower level format, because it is a lower level format then the regular formatt.

Ps: well maybe its a higher level format, since its so complicated

 

[wetcat007]

Try using CFDisk from a linux boot disk that sometimes can fix problems that other stuff cant

 

[paxman]

Thanks Again!

drag: I am actually going to save your instructions for future problems. I just recently wrote zeros to a different hard drive with a different utility and it solved the problems I was having there.