[Linux-Anyway] Re: Windblows total screw up
- From: John Richard Smith <bagsofchoice@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Linux-Anyway@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2004 15:57:17 +0100
Horror Vacui wrote:
>On Thu, 29 Apr 2004 11:13:23 +0100 John wrote:
>
>>Maxtor do a programme called powermax which is essentially a low level
>>
>>formatting tool,but I cannot get the dam thing to run from a dos A: prompt.
>>
Got an updated powermax(from Maxtor) that will boot and run usual test
which all pass, well it's a new hard drive so it would, but it's really
a low level formatting tool, which I haven't done yet, it would be my
last resort. But the real problem is that I now have as a consequence of
opting for a W2000 install with the HD jumpers set to "Cap Limit" (which
means limited to about 32gigs size) a totally screwed up partition
table. It seems to think there are two hard drives, which is stupid.
But I cannot get the system to understand I have only the one. How do
you clear out an invalid partition table and start again? As I
understand it(which may be wrong) is that the partition table is written
to a part of the MBR of each hard drive every time a new partition is
created. The trouble is this HD thinks it's two HD's Am I right in
thinking that a low level format is going to replace the partition table
and all, as I recall the last time I did this on an old haddrive that
was failing, I had to use the dos switch fdisk /mbr to replace the MBR
and a fresh new partition table after I did the low level format. It
seems a bit of a drastic thing to do to a new HD, but maybe it is necessary.
>>
>
>Do you have Knoppix? You might try booting the machine with it and then fdisk
>the HD.
>
Yes I do, and I do use it, though I'm not that proficient with it. But I
found this morning that if I ran MD9.1 CD1 install disk to diskdrake it
seemed to staighten things out a bit , at least it found one hard drive
and reclaimed all available space and I then crashed out of it having
written to disk a new table. OK, so I ran W2K install and found it able
to create the necessary partition and format and install initial file
system but on reboot my mobo still says invalid partition table, and so
I think there is still the vestige of that second HD partition table
lurking around in the partition table.
Of course I may be wrong , I'm not sure all the partition table info is
stored on HD, maybe the bios has some imput here, but if so I don't
understand what. Certainly the bios is set up in two portions the boot
sector and the system sector. As I understand it, when a boot up occures
the bios boot sector looks around the system looking for hardware to
work with and compares this with a known record stored in the CMOS chip
and it they agree the boot process passes over to the system boot
sector, if they do not agree, then the bios asks you to enter the bios
and reset the parameters to what is there.
Now once the bios boot system starts to operate ,the partition table is
looked for and instructions to boot an OS on one of the partitions is
followed. I think this is where it is all screwed up. When looking for a
partition table it finds 2 sets of partition table as if there are 2
HD's when there is only the one. It is at this point that I get the boot
message "Invalid Partition Table"
>
>
>By the way: how recent is your motherboard/BIOS? BIOS always has a limit on
>drive size it can cope with. Your problem seems to be unrelated to
>this, but installing a larg-ish drive on an old-ish motherboard is always a
>bit problematic. Perhaps the disc is too fast for your MoBo?
>
Oh don't worry the mobo is new (K7N2-Delta-l) and the bios chip can
handle up to 160gigs, I checked on that before buying the thing(they are
going fairly cheaply now and can handle K7 amd processors to3200 and
up to FSB400).
>
>
>>Before anyone takes me to task about installing W2000, let me tell you it is
>>not from choice.
>>
>
>Hrm, I was just able to contain myself. You're lucky that it's w2k,which of
>all MS OS's I like the most (rather: I despise the least). If
>you said you were installing XP, there's no telling what the consequences
>would be, but adjectives like "grave", "fatal" and"ghastly" pop readily into
>mind as likely to be used ;)
>
>Cheers
>
I agree entirely , I hate XP , but there are some aps that I can only
get with a windows OS, and they simply will never be available to us
linux users, no matter what. That's life, and if I could I would do away
with windblows entirely I would.
Anyway, would a low level format remove every vesige of a partition table ?
It seems a bit drastic, but if necessary, and with my harddrive
manufacutrers warranty permission I could do that, I'm not squeemish to
try it out if necessary.
Has anyone else ever come across this "cap limit" HD jumper settings
before ? and if so have you ever experienced anything so wierd as that
which I'm experiencing ?
By the way I read on maxtor website today, that W2000 has a limit of
137gigs to it's ability to work with large HD's and that anything over
that needs a patch, presumeably installed on desktop, though it was not
exsplicit about that.
So I'm still scratching my head , any further comment and ideas welcomed.
John
--
John Richard Smith
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