Curious Hard Drive Issue

  • Thread starter Thread starter Manu
  • Start date Start date
M

Manu

Recently, I replaced a Western Digital 160GB drive on one PC with a Hitachi
250GB one. This is the master on the primary IDE channel on a Promise TX2
Ultra-133 PCI Controller. The drive was partitioned (NTFS) and formatted in
Disk Management and works perfectly in Windows (XP Pro).

However, Ghost 2003 cannot see this drive when it reboots to write an image.
Sees it fine within Windows though. I tried to use Ghost off a floppy and it
too cannot see the drive. The drive does have the required "Ghost ID". I
borrowed an Acronis TrueImage utility floppy and it cannot see the drive
either!

On a whim, I tested NTFS4DOS off a floppy and it does not see the drive
also. Carrying the whim further, I temporarily restored this PC with a older
Windows 98SE image which had large-drive support as well as NTFS4Win
installed. That too does not see the drive! But it does see the 300GB drive
that is also on the controller. Incidentally, Device Manager in that Windows
98SE does show the Hitachi drive, but without a drive letter assigned and
reporting it as an "unknown partition". I surmised that this is not a
Ghost-related problem.

I tried a partition delete + recreate + format using the Hitachi/IBM drive
set-up utility but it did not help. Physicals - jumpers, changing over to
the secondary IDE controller, drive fitness test, chkdsk etc. - all were
tried. When I put the old drive back, everything works fine again, at least
as far as Ghost is concerned.

I do regular Ghost image back ups and need this drive functional within its
operations - hence this post.

I would really appreciate any insights on what to look for in addressing
this issue. Please excuse my verbosity here!

Regards and have a nice day.

Manu
 
Manu said:
Recently, I replaced a Western Digital 160GB drive on one PC with a
Hitachi
250GB one. This is the master on the primary IDE channel on a Promise TX2
Ultra-133 PCI Controller. The drive was partitioned (NTFS) and formatted
in
Disk Management and works perfectly in Windows (XP Pro).

However, Ghost 2003 cannot see this drive when it reboots to write an
image.
Sees it fine within Windows though. I tried to use Ghost off a floppy and
it
too cannot see the drive. The drive does have the required "Ghost ID". I
borrowed an Acronis TrueImage utility floppy and it cannot see the drive
either!

On a whim, I tested NTFS4DOS off a floppy and it does not see the drive
also. Carrying the whim further, I temporarily restored this PC with a
older
Windows 98SE image which had large-drive support as well as NTFS4Win
installed. That too does not see the drive! But it does see the 300GB
drive
that is also on the controller. Incidentally, Device Manager in that
Windows
98SE does show the Hitachi drive, but without a drive letter assigned and
reporting it as an "unknown partition". I surmised that this is not a
Ghost-related problem.

I tried a partition delete + recreate + format using the Hitachi/IBM drive
set-up utility but it did not help. Physicals - jumpers, changing over to
the secondary IDE controller, drive fitness test, chkdsk etc. - all were
tried. When I put the old drive back, everything works fine again, at
least
as far as Ghost is concerned.

I do regular Ghost image back ups and need this drive functional within
its
operations - hence this post.

I would really appreciate any insights on what to look for in addressing
this issue. Please excuse my verbosity here!

Regards and have a nice day.

Manu
Click to expand...


Manu:
Just so I clearly understand your problem, let me ask you a few questions...

1. I'm not entirely clear on your HD configuration. You've indicated the
Hitachi 250 GB drive is connected to the Promise controller and you
apparently have a 300 GB drive also connected to that controller.

2. Do you boot to the 250 GB HD? Are any drives connected to your
motherboard's Primary/Secondary IDE controllers? (I assume your drives are
PATA, right?)

3. Is the reason your 250 GB HD is connected to the Promise controller
rather than your motherboard's IDE channel because the BIOS does not support
large-capacity disks?

4. I assume you're able to boot to the Hitachi drive (if indeed it *is* your
booting drive) without any problem and it's perfectly functional, yes? Is
then your basic problem that you want to clone the contents of that drive to
another drive on your machine (the 300 GB one?) but Ghost 2003 doesn't
recognize the existence of your source drive? What is the specific error
message you get when you boot to the Ghost 2003 bootable floppy? Why do you
say Ghost "cannot see this drive when it reboots"? Is rebooting an issue
here?
Anna
 
Hi Anna,

Thanks for your response. My responses are appropriately included beneath
each of your queries.


Anna said:
Manu:
Just so I clearly understand your problem, let me ask you a few
questions...

1. I'm not entirely clear on your HD configuration. You've indicated the
Hitachi 250 GB drive is connected to the Promise controller and you
apparently have a 300 GB drive also connected to that controller.
Click to expand...


The Hitachi 250GB and a Maxtor 300GB are connected to the
primary channel of the Promise controller. The secondary channel is vacant.
I have tried various combinations in connecting the drives to the two
channels - one on each, swap channels, swap slave/master positions, swap
jumper settings - master/slave/cable-select, also changed IDE cables (all
are UltraIDE compatible 80-conductor). To no effect.
2. Do you boot to the 250 GB HD? Are any drives connected to your
motherboard's Primary/Secondary IDE controllers? (I assume your drives are
PATA, right?)
Click to expand...

The boot drive (IBM 120GB) and a DVD-RW are on the primary
channel of the motherboard controller. The secondary controller is not used
right now. It was earlier populated with two optical drives.
3. Is the reason your 250 GB HD is connected to the Promise controller
rather than your motherboard's IDE channel because the BIOS does not
support large-capacity disks?
Click to expand...


Yes, that is the way it was set up about 3 years back.
4. I assume you're able to boot to the Hitachi drive (if indeed it *is*
your booting drive) without any problem and it's perfectly functional,
yes? Is then your basic problem that you want to clone the contents of
that drive to another drive on your machine (the 300 GB one?) but Ghost
2003 doesn't recognize the existence of your source drive? What is the
specific error message you get when you boot to the Ghost 2003 bootable
floppy? Why do you say Ghost "cannot see this drive when it reboots"? Is
rebooting an issue here?
Anna
Click to expand...

Rebooting into Windows is not an issue here. But when a Ghost 2003 imaging
job is run, even from within Windows, Ghost will shut down the computer and
restart in DOS mode to do the task. It is on this DOS reboot part that Ghost
cannot see the drive. My version of Ghost does not do an imaging task within
Windows as Acronis TrueImage or Ghost 9 does.

The Ghost process aborts and returns the machine to Windows (as it should)
and delivers an error report indicating the failure as target drive not
found. But works perfectly okay if a target is selected in a directory of
the 300GB drive. And I can do an image to blank optical media perfectly. And
been working with the original 160GB drive that was swapped out!

I do not want to clone the contents of my drive. I run the Ghost image
function as a regular drive back up for a couple of years not with no
problems except on this one particular drive. I also tried a Ghost cloning
operation to see if it made any difference - but not.

I have no poblems with any Ghost image creation task or operations so far
with any previous hardware configuration on this particular machine. It is
only this particular hard drive that exhibits this curious behavior.

Again, I also tried connecting the large drives to the secondary controller
of the motherboard. Weird enough, WindowsXP can work with them perfectly
even though the BIOS on this mobo apparently does not support large drives.
But the Ghost oddity persists in this configuration also.

There is actually nothing wrong with the hardware and storage device
configuration at all on this machine. Windows XP Pro now, as well as Windows
2000 Pro, Windows 98SE earlier - all work perfectly.

The only unexplained phenomenon is the invisibility of this particular hard
drive to Ghost or any other DOS-based environment suitable for reading large
NTFS drives. I do not have a problem with bigger hard drives in a similar
situation on this machine. Or on others. And, yes, I temporarily connected
this drive to another available machine and the issue cropped up there also.

As I said before, it does not seem to me to be a Ghost issue at all but a
hardware one. I am posting this to this newsgroup because I am running
Windows XP, and unfortunately I cannot retun the drive to the retail store
as the 30-day period passed and no additional warranty was purchased.
Hitachi/IBM will not take the drive back even though the warranty is valid
simply because of the fact that there is no "problem/defect" with it - DFT
gave it more than a clean bill of health! And it does work perfectly, except
for the Ghost part.

Seems like I truly got a Ghost in my machine!

Thanks very much for enduring my long-windedness.

Manu
 
Hi Jaymon,

Thanks for the excellent reference links - they have been very informative.

I checked the info on the Symantec link with my issue and found that there
was no reason why this particular drive is not seen by Ghost 2003. And I
successfully updated the BIOS on the Promise card (the driver was current
already).

But this phenomenon still persisted. But one thing changed though: If I use
the Ghost utility off a floppy it now sees the drive in the window where it
lists the source drives. But it is still invisible in the destination drives
and directories window! Extremely weird.

For now, I decided to address the issue simply by changing the location of
my weekly drive image (and documents sync folder + other back-up stuff) to
the 300GB drive which does not have the Ghost issue. I had originally
planned to use the Hitachi 250GB but I do not want to take any chances now
in the event that this drive might someday turn inaccessible to any OS or
utility!

Thanks very much again for the very helpful informative links! Much
appreciate it.

Regards.

Manu
 
Update to the latest version of Ghost 10 or True Image 9. Either will be
able to work with the drives connected to the ATA-133 card.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
Hi Richard,

Thanks for the response. Actually, as I said before, my Ghost 2003 has
always been able to work with drives connected to the ATA-133 card.

It is just this one particular drive that seems to be invisible. And it
remains invisible to Ghost in DOS even when connected to the motherboard IDE
controller. It is only visible within the Windows environment.

Anyhow I have decided on changing my plans slightly in order to address this
issue, as outlined in my response to Jaymon earlier in this thread.

Thanks very much for your suggestion - I appreciate the input.

Regards.

Manu
 
Manu,
When you originally formated the Hitachi 250, did you by chance change the
cluster
size from 4KB (Allocation unit size, default) to something higher..?
Just a thought..
j;-j
 
Hi Jaymon,

Thanks for the input. No, all the drives on this machine (as my others) are
formatted with 4096 Byte NTFS sector size.

I checked every physical and software settings I could think of - from drive
jumper settings to sector sizes - but this one particular drive simply does
not show up anywhere in a DOS environment capable of handling large NTFS
drives. I have no problem with any of the other 8 large (250GB - 300GB)
drives I have on the machines I work with - only this one.

I am tending to think it is a one-of-a-kind drive hardware oddity because
the unit itself works fast and unerringly in a Windows environment. Maybe I
should preserve it for research later but for now I am reconfiguring my back
up utilities on this one machine so that file & folder back ups and drive
images are done to a drive other than the errant Hitachi unit!

An associate who stopped by yesterday left with slightly fewer hairs on his
head - after much head-scratching trying to figure it out!

Regards and thanks again.

Manu
 
RESPONDING TO Jaymon WHO HAD INQUIRED ABOUT THE "CLUSTER SIZE" OF HIS 250 GB
HITACHI HD)
Hi Jaymon,

Thanks for the input. No, all the drives on this machine (as my others)
are formatted with 4096 Byte NTFS sector size.

I checked every physical and software settings I could think of - from
drive jumper settings to sector sizes - but this one particular drive
simply does not show up anywhere in a DOS environment capable of handling
large NTFS drives. I have no problem with any of the other 8 large
(250GB - 300GB) drives I have on the machines I work with - only this one.

I am tending to think it is a one-of-a-kind drive hardware oddity because
the unit itself works fast and unerringly in a Windows environment. Maybe
I should preserve it for research later but for now I am reconfiguring my
back up utilities on this one machine so that file & folder back ups and
drive images are done to a drive other than the errant Hitachi unit!

An associate who stopped by yesterday left with slightly fewer hairs on
his head - after much head-scratching trying to figure it out!

Regards and thanks again.

Manu
Click to expand...


Manu:
While I'm not at all certain that I precisely understand how your system is
setup with respect to your hard drives configuration, I'm surely at a loss
as to exactly what your objective is and whatever the problem is that
impacts on that objective.

So rather than include all the previous postings re this thread, let me
summarize what I think your situation is and try to gain some understanding
of what you're trying to achieve here.

1. In a later posting you mentioned that your boot drive is a 120 GB HD
presumably connected as Primary Master. You have two other HDs connected to
a Promise controller card - a Hitachi 250 GB drive and a Maxtor 300 GB. (I
think you previously mentioned that you're working with an older motherboard
whose BIOS does not recognize large-capacity disks and that's the reason
you're using the Promise controller card). From your past comments we're
assuming that all these drives are non-defective and functional. I assume
your system is basically sound in that you can boot to your 120 GB drive
without incident.

2. You have some problem using the Ghost 2003 program in terms of it
recognizing the 250 GB drive. I take it the nub of your problem is this
"non-recognition" issue involving that drive.

3. What *precisely* is the problem? Are you trying to insure that you can
maintain a backup of your day-to-day working HD, i.e., your 120 GB drive
using the Ghost 2003 disk imaging program. What is it that you want to
achieve here?

4. And if the preceding *is* your objective, is the problem simply that
Ghost does not "see" the 250 GB HD so that you cannot clone the contents of
your source disk (presumably your 120 GB booting drive) to that Hitachi?

5. I know you previously stated that "I do not want to clone the contents of
my drive". What then is your objective?

6. I believe you stated you're working with a Ghost 2003 bootable floppy
disk and you're familiar with Ghost's disk imaging process particularly as
it affects *direct* disk-to-disk cloning of the contents of one HD to
another HD. And your Ghost bootable floppy disk was created with the Ghost
2003.793 build, yes?

Forgive my denseness re my apparent failure to understand your problem. The
issue may be moot at this point since I just came across a recent comment by
you that "Anyhow I have decided on changing my plans slightly in order to
address this
issue...". But if you want to pursue this issue further would you clearly
and directly state your precise problem.
Anna
 
Hi Manu,

As you might know, when ghost boots up it goes into a PC-DOS environment
which normally recognizes generic drives.

In some cases, especially when dealing with new drives, the drive you are
trying to mount is invisible because it is usually not recognized. The same
goes with DVD burners and other external storage.

What I would suggest is to load the drivers manually (just like when you
install win98 from a boot disk, and need the CDROM drive to work). You can
normally get the drivers (for your controller and your drive) from the
manufacturer. Install it from the command line and see whether Ghost can see
your drives..

I hope this helps!
 
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