Compact Flash NTFS "Disk Read Error" on boot

  • Thread starter Thread starter Arnshea
  • Start date Start date
A

Arnshea

After upgrading the box we use to deploy XPe images, whenever I tried
to boot XPe from a Compact Flash drive w/ a single NTFS formatted
partition I would get a "Disk Read Error" immediately after POST.

Unfortunately the fixmbr option of the wonderful utility MbrFix didn't
work for me (though saving a working mbr then restoring did work).

It looks like the disk management software built into Windows XP (My
Computer -> right click -> Manage -> Disk Management) doesn't set the
partition type byte properly for NTFS. Even if you choose NTFS when
creating a partition, the byte gets written as 0x6 (which is FAT16)
instead of 0x7 (which is NTFS).

You can manually set the partition type byte using the command line
utility diskpart (also included in WinXP). The command is create
partition primary size=<size> id=7 (replace <size> with the size of
your partition - I leave 1MB free since we're using a RAM EWF
overlay).

Use "active" to mark the partition active. diskpart requires you to
set the focus to the drive/partition/volume you're using so use the
list disk command to determine which disk is your Compact Flash drive
then use select disk <n> (replace <n> w/ the correct disk number).

Make sure to clean the mbr before creating a new partition using the
clean command.
 
Hey, thanks for this Arnshea!

I have noticed the same problem with Compact Flash and Windows XP
formatting NTFS. I had to resort to copying a "good" MBR from one of
our working images, and then using PartitionMagic 8 to format NTFS. But
it would really save some time if I could get my development machine
(Win XP Pro) to format the flash NTFS for me. I'll try using diskpart
(which I did not know existed :-).

Thanks again,

Adam
ims3k.com
 
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