Re: [H] Bad Partition
I'd download a gentoo minimal boot CD, boot up with it, then just write 0's to the first few hundred MB of the drive. If it is the only drive in the system once you're at the command prompt do: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bz=1M count=300 Will overwrite the first 300MB of the drive with zero's, if that doesn't clear up the drive detection issues, pretty much nothing will. THIS WILL MAKE IT SERIOUSLY DIFFICULT TO RECOVER DATA ON THE DRIVE, but since it doesn't have any needed data should take care of things nicely. I'm sure you can use pretty much any CD/DVD based live linux disk for this, but the minimal gentoo disk is only 100MB or so last I looked. Christopher Fisk -- Twenty of the suckiest minutes of my life. -- Homer Simpson, Burns, Baby Burns -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.
Re: [H] Bad Partition
thanks, but the solution turned out to be surprisingly easy... even if old school. I realized that PM8 DOS boot disks were using Caldera to boot and load successfully, although PM8 could not delete the bad partition that it created and that was causing the problem. MS DOS 98 would not boot, nor would any of my Linux disks like DISKWIPE, or Active partition recovery. Seagate, Maxtor Sea Tools would boot with Dr. Dos but couldn't see any drive. Fortunately, I still have a image file for IBM Dr.DOS 6.X. I created a floppy, booted off that and used FDISK to delete the foreign partition, and that was that. Now I am using DISKWIPE to remove all traces of everything off the drive. All this, just so I can finish playing BIOSHOCK on a 32 bit XP machine! At 06:28 PM 1/24/2010, you wrote: I'd try DBAN (both the stable 1.x and 2.x beta branches). Boots from CD, and uses a lightweight linux kernel. > -Original Message- > From: hardware-boun...@hardwaregroup.com [mailto:hardware- > boun...@hardwaregroup.com] On Behalf Of Winterlight > Sent: Sunday, January 24, 2010 7:04 PM > To: hardware@hardwaregroup.com > Subject: [H] Bad Partition > > I have a hard drive SATA1 300GB Maxtor, worked fine. I put it in one > of my machines and booted into windows, moved off all the data and > then did a format NTFS. Then I decided to use it in another machine > as the boot drive. I didn't have any partitioning software on this XP > machine so I booted off my old Partition Magic 8 floppies. For some > reason PM8 DOS reported a partition error on the Maxtor when it > started up,.. something about 1024 end point, and asked to fix it... > I foolishly said OK and it reported all fixed. But when it finished > loading I discovered it had a bad partition no doubt caused by PM8s > fixing it. PM8 couldn't delete the partition ... it just showed the > bad partition. > > I thought OK I will use DiskWipe in DOS to wipe it clean. But disk > wipe wouldn't load with that DISK hooked up. Nor would a boot floppy, > or windows.Only the PM8 DOS floppies will boot and load. I took the > drive out, put it on a motherboard with nothing but a cpu, ram, video > and a floppy and tried to boot... no can do. > > There is no data on the drive and it isn't worth much but if I could > wipe the drive I could restore it. I can't fix it if I can't boot > while it is installed. Have I missed something ... is there a way to > fix this? Or is it time to take it apart for the magnets. > > thanks
Re: [H] Bad Partition
I'd try DBAN (both the stable 1.x and 2.x beta branches). Boots from CD, and uses a lightweight linux kernel. > -Original Message- > From: hardware-boun...@hardwaregroup.com [mailto:hardware- > boun...@hardwaregroup.com] On Behalf Of Winterlight > Sent: Sunday, January 24, 2010 7:04 PM > To: hardware@hardwaregroup.com > Subject: [H] Bad Partition > > I have a hard drive SATA1 300GB Maxtor, worked fine. I put it in one > of my machines and booted into windows, moved off all the data and > then did a format NTFS. Then I decided to use it in another machine > as the boot drive. I didn't have any partitioning software on this XP > machine so I booted off my old Partition Magic 8 floppies. For some > reason PM8 DOS reported a partition error on the Maxtor when it > started up,.. something about 1024 end point, and asked to fix it... > I foolishly said OK and it reported all fixed. But when it finished > loading I discovered it had a bad partition no doubt caused by PM8s > fixing it. PM8 couldn't delete the partition ... it just showed the > bad partition. > > I thought OK I will use DiskWipe in DOS to wipe it clean. But disk > wipe wouldn't load with that DISK hooked up. Nor would a boot floppy, > or windows.Only the PM8 DOS floppies will boot and load. I took the > drive out, put it on a motherboard with nothing but a cpu, ram, video > and a floppy and tried to boot... no can do. > > There is no data on the drive and it isn't worth much but if I could > wipe the drive I could restore it. I can't fix it if I can't boot > while it is installed. Have I missed something ... is there a way to > fix this? Or is it time to take it apart for the magnets. > > thanks
[H] Bad Partition
I have a hard drive SATA1 300GB Maxtor, worked fine. I put it in one of my machines and booted into windows, moved off all the data and then did a format NTFS. Then I decided to use it in another machine as the boot drive. I didn't have any partitioning software on this XP machine so I booted off my old Partition Magic 8 floppies. For some reason PM8 DOS reported a partition error on the Maxtor when it started up,.. something about 1024 end point, and asked to fix it... I foolishly said OK and it reported all fixed. But when it finished loading I discovered it had a bad partition no doubt caused by PM8s fixing it. PM8 couldn't delete the partition ... it just showed the bad partition. I thought OK I will use DiskWipe in DOS to wipe it clean. But disk wipe wouldn't load with that DISK hooked up. Nor would a boot floppy, or windows.Only the PM8 DOS floppies will boot and load. I took the drive out, put it on a motherboard with nothing but a cpu, ram, video and a floppy and tried to boot... no can do. There is no data on the drive and it isn't worth much but if I could wipe the drive I could restore it. I can't fix it if I can't boot while it is installed. Have I missed something ... is there a way to fix this? Or is it time to take it apart for the magnets. thanks
