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  • How about this HD problem?

    I took a 3.2 GB Seagate HD from an old machine where I had installed Dynamic Drive Overlay onto it. The new machine correctly identifies the drive parameters (LBA), but apparently the drive cannot be written to. Both MS-DOS and Windows 2000 installations fail when they try to access the drive.

    Seagate Disk Manager software finds something on the drive that affects the MBR and gives instructions on how to remove or replace it. I tried both options - they reported success, however nothing changed.. Rebooting and running Disk Manager gives the same warning again.

    I also tried the newer DiscWizard software. It gave no warnings, so I just tried to partition and format the drive with it, which happened rather quickly and I couldn't hear the HD do anything.. Then it asked for an OS diskette and appeared to copy the system files, but still the drive wouldn't boot.

    Any ideas? Could a low level format be the solution?


    PS. I also tried another IDE cable.
    There's no place like 127.0.0.1

  • #2
    Those drive overlay programs are a pain in the rump, huh?

    Try Partition Magic on it - ought to wipe it clean.

    Or try booting the Win2k CD and having it format the disc.

    - Gurm
    The Internet - where men are men, women are men, and teenage girls are FBI agents!

    I'm the least you could do
    If only life were as easy as you
    I'm the least you could do, oh yeah
    If only life were as easy as you
    I would still get screwed

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    • #3
      fdisk anyone?
      According to the latest official figures, 43% of all statistics are totally worthless...

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      • #4
        Anything else than Seagate's software do not seem to be able to access/write to the disk..

        MS-DOS always sees an empty disk and wants to allocate the free space, but then gives a read(/write?) error.

        Windows 2000 installation says something like "can't write identification on the boot sector" and doesn't go any further..
        There's no place like 127.0.0.1

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        • #5
          I had something simillar happen out of the blue recently to my win2k box. Basically the BIOS was write-protecting the drive. I reflashed the bios (updated at same time) which solved the problem, although I guess just resetting the CMOS might have done the trick.

          Of course, Gurm's probably right

          T.
          FT.

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          • #6
            When I have a HDD giving me shit, I use a bootable BeOS installation CD, do a FORMAT (low level) on it and then let fdisk do his stuff.

            Usually it works just fine after that *evil grin*

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            • #7
              *sigh* Why must Tony be sarcastic towards me?

              Anyway, there is a problem with low-level formats. I forget the exact technical reasons, but they aren't always a good plan.

              As for those overlays, they can be tricky things. Remember that they have to be sneaky enough to convince older machines that the drive is really set up a certain way, but then appear differently to the OS. It can get ugly.

              Seriously, try Partition Magic... or something else that gets low-level... like the BeOS disk that was previously mentioned.

              - Gurm
              The Internet - where men are men, women are men, and teenage girls are FBI agents!

              I'm the least you could do
              If only life were as easy as you
              I'm the least you could do, oh yeah
              If only life were as easy as you
              I would still get screwed

              Comment


              • #8
                Hey Gurm, its just a little good-natured digging because our styles are so different! Sometimes yours winds me up for a minute.

                Peace man
                FT.

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                • #9
                  Here are some screenshots (jpeg).

                  Configuration info:
                  Latest news coverage, email, free stock quotes, live scores and video are just the beginning. Discover more every day at Yahoo!


                  Disk Manager warning:
                  Latest news coverage, email, free stock quotes, live scores and video are just the beginning. Discover more every day at Yahoo!


                  DOS setup error:
                  Latest news coverage, email, free stock quotes, live scores and video are just the beginning. Discover more every day at Yahoo!


                  FDISK:
                  Latest news coverage, email, free stock quotes, live scores and video are just the beginning. Discover more every day at Yahoo!


                  I have also tried setting LBA off from BIOS -- no change.

                  FDISK just hangs if I try to create a new partition.

                  I'm beginning to think the disk got damaged somehow during the switch, or perhaps it just isn't compatible with this motherboard..
                  There's no place like 127.0.0.1

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    If the seagate can't remove its own made Dynamic Drive Overlay. You can try a low level format like Dogbert suggested this will certainly remove the Dynamic Drive Overlay.
                    Main: Dual Xeon LV2.4Ghz@3.1Ghz | 3X21" | NVidia 6800 | 2Gb DDR | SCSI
                    Second: Dual PIII 1GHz | 21" Monitor | G200MMS + Quadro 2 Pro | 512MB ECC SDRAM | SCSI
                    Third: Apple G4 450Mhz | 21" Monitor | Radeon 8500 | 1,5Gb SDRAM | SCSI

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                    • #11
                      IBM has a util that can write 0s to the entire drive surface.
                      Maybe Seagate does too.
                      You could then try starting from scratch to fdisk using win98's fdisk.
                      chuck
                      Chuck
                      秋音的爸爸

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                      • #12
                        Try the command FDISK /MBR. That should wipe the MBR clean and any overlay software with it. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but its been a while since I've worked in DOS.
                        P=I^2*R
                        Antec SX1240|Asus A7V333WR|Athlon XP2200 1.80Ghz|512 MB PC2700|TDK VeloCD 24-10-40b|Samsung 16x DVD|SBAudigy2|ATI Radeon 8500 128MB|WinTV Theater|15/20/60GB Maxtor|3x 100GB WD100JB RAID0 on Promise Fastrak Lite|WinXP-Pro|Samsung SyncMaster 181T and 700p+|Watercooled

                        IBM Thinkpad T22|900Mhz|256MB|32GB|14.1TFT|Gentoo

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                        • #13
                          FDISK /MBR -- no change.. Partition Magic 7 gave a Write fault error (#49) when it attempted to create a new partition.. Seagate Diagnostic program hanged at PIO/DMA data compare test..

                          I'll just get a new HD

                          Update: I got a 40 GB Samsung and it works fine.

                          Last edited by Lucid; 15 March 2002, 15:55.
                          There's no place like 127.0.0.1

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