Partition Magic 6 displaying Hard drive errors

[gopheryang]

Hi everyone,
This is my first post here.
A little piece of info of my setup:
Windows 2000 pro
Partition Magic 6 (Chinese) (also Boot Magic installed)
Seagate 20GB (within 1 year)
-names and vol. labels-
Win2000 (C: ) 4.75GB
DATABASE (D: ) 10.4GB
OS (E: ) 3.31GB
MULTI_BOOT (F: ) 78.2MB
(and some 7mb free space wandering about)

I need to move some partitions on a HD, but when Partition Magic started, it said I have error 117, so PM never executed, just closed itself. Error 117 isn't serious, since the Powerquest solution is to use the PM diskette to boot it under dos. In dos, the program did run, but the only error now is error 105, so I can basically do nothing to the disk. Using PartInfo in Windows gave these:
Partition Info- No partition errors detected. (for all partitions)
Disk Geometry info-
C: No disk geometry errors detected.
D: Info: End C,H,S values were large drive placeholders.
Actual values are:
0 1 00 621 2 1 17 1989 254 63 9976491 21992859
Error #105: Partition didn't begin on head boundary.
ucBeginHead expected to be 0 or 1, not 2.
E: Info: Begin C,H,S values were large drive placeholders.
Info: End C,H,S values were large drive placeholders.
Actual values are:
0 2 00 1989 2 1 1C 2423 1 63 31953411 6972210
Error #105: Partition didn't begin on head boundary.
ucBeginHead expected to be 0 or 1, not 2.
Error #108: Partition didn't end on cylinder boundary.
ucEndHead expected to be 254, not 1.
F: Info: Begin C,H,S values were large drive placeholders.
Info: End C,H,S values were large drive placeholders.
Actual values are:
0 3 00 2423 2 1 1E 2432 254 63 38925621 160524
Error #105: Partition didn't begin on head boundary.
ucBeginHead expected to be 0 or 1, not 2.

All partitions and formats were made either by Fdisk or Windows disk tools. Powerquest mentioned Fdisk will only create "Heads" of 0 or 1, not 2, and that they take no responsibility in working with these wierd drives. Is it true my drive is hopeless?

I also tried PM 7 (english) and Partition Commander.

[BipolarBill]

Welcome to SysOpt!

Are any drive overlays applied to the disk? You know...EZDrive, Disk Manager, etc. If so, they must be removed with the appropriate utility before doing anything.

You can always try using
Zap (http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/support/download.htm) to clear the disk (after running a thorough disk scan).

[gopheryang]

No, I have no other disk related software installed or running. I always try to clear all programs possible before running PM, which never executed. "Zap to clear the disk" what's that? Is that for completely deleting files?

[BipolarBill]

Zap is a program that low-level formats the first 128 sectors of the disk and effectively clears everything on the disk. It makes the disk as clear as the day it was unpacked.

If you click on the word, it will take you to the page. Here's a link:

http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/support/download.htm

[moebius]

BIPOLAR, THAT HAS TO BE ONE OF THE FUNNIEST GRAPHICS I'VE SEEN IN A LONG TIME!!!!! DESCRIBES PERFECTLY HOW I FEEL SOMETIMES. :D

[BipolarBill]

Thanks. I got that puppy from a senior USB engineer at Intel - one Kosta Koeman. If the guys at Intel can identify with it, you know it's all relative. :p