//flex table opened by JP

Click to See Complete Forum and Search --> : check out this prob.... (long) ..... HELP!!


drdeath
10-01-1999, 01:45 PM
heres the deal - i have like 4 comps that i was working on the other day, swapping parts (cards, hard drives, etc) between all of them for various reasons. anyways, i had a 3.0 gig hard drive in one comp and then took it out, and put in a 1.2 gig drive, but didnt turn it on cuz i went to bed soon after. the next day, i turned it on to install linux, but i forgot that i hadnt "detected" the 1.2 gig drive in the bios. i started it up and booted off a floppy and started to install linux. it started creating the partitions, and then i got this "critical hard drive error" message (or somethin like that) and thats when it occured to me that the 3.0 gig drive's paramaters were still in the bios using this 1.2 gig drive, and linux was trying to partition 3 gigs of space instead of 1.2. i immediately quit, and restarted and redetected the drive. now, however, i cant format or partition the drive. the bios detects it fine. when i start fdisk, tho, it says "cannot read from drive 1". i can look at the "current partition settings" and it says somethin like "120 MB extended DOS aprtition" and "2800 MB in Non DOS partition" - even tho it is a 1.2 gig drive. i tried deleting them, but when i restart, they are there again. i cannot get rid of these partitions, or format the drive! does anyone know how to fix this???

800XL
10-01-1999, 10:17 PM
fdisk /mbr

Give it a shot. Not sure if it is going to work though. It could take a zero fill program or something similar to get it back in shape again.

drdeath
10-01-1999, 10:49 PM
no, it didnt work. what is that anyways? ive never seen that tag before!

Underclocked
10-01-1999, 10:56 PM
Try getting the drive manufacturer's software for troubleshooting the drive and write all zeros to it. Then format it. If that won't work, I think you are done.

drdeath
10-01-1999, 11:33 PM
hey - i got a prog from western digital, and was able to write all zeros to the drive, and it works again!!!! /forum/smile.gif /forum/smile.gif /forum/smile.gif /forum/smile.gif /forum/smile.gif

thanks a bunch guys!!! /forum/smile.gif /forum/smile.gif /forum/smile.gif /forum/smile.gif /forum/smile.gif /forum/smile.gif

(if you couldnt tell, i'm happy again!!)