[XP]Setup doesn't see my partition table

[kadooosh]

heres the case:
my windows is on a 80gb HDD with 1 partition c:\...
And i have a 250gb with 3 partitions d:\ e:\ f:

Now i wanna put the 80gb hdd in another system.. doesn't sound so hard eh ?
well not for me
when I run xp setup without the 80gb setup sees my 250gb as non-partitioned space
In the recovery console it doesn't show the partions either...
So I do the 80gb one back and boot windows
now even windows doesn't see my partitions so im getting really scared
but well thanks for a neat program called testdisk that recovered my partition table and after a reboot its back again, in the same program i tried to make it bootable but that didn't work either
disk manager says nothing special...
http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/948/naamloos1cs8.jpg

Specs:
Amd athlon 2400+
ECS N2U400
2x256mb DDR
Samsung 80GB SP0822n
Samsung 250GB SP2514N

btw this isn't the same pc as the other topic im using the HD of this pc and the cdr of another pc to build a cheap pc
im just very unlucky(been trying to fix it for hours today..)

 

[kadooosh]

need help 2x
i guess I could format the 250gb... IF the other problem is solved so i can backup my data there..

 

[kadooosh]

i deleted/copied alot of data so now I formated the whole disk and made a 20gb partition in xp setup and installed xp... and well now xp wont start
I went in to recovery console and ran chkdsk fixboot and fixmbr but didnt help

 

[bsobel]

Does your XP setup disk have at least SP1 on it, otherwise it's going to have trouble reading that drive since its bigger than 137gig...

 

[kadooosh]

ya it has sp2 on it

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: kadooosh
ya it has sp2 on it

Hmm, that should be all you need. Sorry that wasn't it (scratches head and will have to think about it a bit more)

 

[kadooosh]

I did a test with samsung's hdd tool , it told me everything was fine...
removed mbr and formatting now with the same tool

 

[jameswhite1979]

Did you convert the HDD to dynamic?

 

[kadooosh]

dynamic?
not that i know off

 

[jameswhite1979]

OK it can cause some issues if swapped about you would know if you had as it warns you. It is a right mouse option under drive management MSC.

 

[kadooosh]

I solved it the samsung tool did the trick.... 16 hours low lvl formatting but it worked (prob only the removing mbr worked too lol dunno )
still thanks all

 

[VirtualLarry]

It might have been a problem in the BIOS between "Large" and "LBA" mapping. There was an issue with a certain Fedora Core build screwing up the partition table when installing for a dual-boot, such that if the HD was set to "Auto" for translation mode, that it would revert to "Large" instead of the usual default "LBA" mode, and then the partition table would end up screwy, and corrupting data.

Apparently what modern BIOSes do when set to "AUTO", is to read the partition table off of the HD, and then base their autodetection on whether or not they think they see a part. table from a "Large" HD or not. So if the partition table gets modified, bad things can happen. That particular FC installer modified it in a "bad" way, and caused that to happen.