Maxtor drive lost all partitons

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bob H
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Bob H

I bought a brand new Maxtor Diamond Plus 8 160Gb Hard disk last week,
partitioned it up into about 5 partitions, put various files and
downloaded stuff on them, then all at once like today, none of the
partitions were available!
Win2k reported that folders were not available and were corrupt.
So, I rebooted and the HD was found ok on bootup; fdisk reported only
25Gb available, but maybe that was just fdisk. I booted back into
Windows and all the partitions on that disk had disappeared.
I then ran PM8 and re partitioned the said disk again, but I am loathe
to put anything on it in case the same thing happens.

One thing I did notice tho' was when I was burning some files, 350mb
approx, to a CDR, I heard some ticking noise, and at first I thoght it
was coming from my CDRwriter, coz after the burning stopped so did the
ticking.

Any ideas as to what may have caused it? I did NOT do anything out of
the ordainary on this machine at all. It just happened??

Thanks
 
Bob said:
I bought a brand new Maxtor Diamond Plus 8 160Gb Hard disk last week,
Click to expand...

Is that old stock or something? They've been doing Diamond Plus _9_
drives for some time now.
partitioned it up into about 5 partitions, put various files and
downloaded stuff on them, then all at once like today, none of the
partitions were available!
Win2k reported that folders were not available and were corrupt.
So, I rebooted and the HD was found ok on bootup; fdisk reported only
25Gb available, but maybe that was just fdisk. I booted back into
Windows and all the partitions on that disk had disappeared.
I then ran PM8 and re partitioned the said disk again, but I am loathe
to put anything on it in case the same thing happens.

One thing I did notice tho' was when I was burning some files, 350mb
approx, to a CDR, I heard some ticking noise, and at first I thoght it
was coming from my CDRwriter, coz after the burning stopped so did the
ticking.

Any ideas as to what may have caused it? I did NOT do anything out of
the ordainary on this machine at all. It just happened??

Thanks
Click to expand...

I doubt it's the drive's fault -- more likely software, IMHO.
 
If you had used Disk Manager instead, it would likely show only 128GB.

If so, you cannot use the rest of the disk, because your BIOS or old IDE driver
do not support larger disks. Instead it overwrites at the beginning.
 
Eric said:
If you had used Disk Manager instead, it would likely show only 128GB.

If so, you cannot use the rest of the disk, because your BIOS or old IDE driver
do not support larger disks. Instead it overwrites at the beginning.
Click to expand...
 
CJT said:
Is that old stock or something? They've been doing Diamond Plus _9_
drives for some time now.
Click to expand...

Ooops, I misread, Its a 7200rpm with 8mb cache, so I suppose that would
be a _9_ now
 
Eric said:
If you had used Disk Manager instead, it would likely show only 128GB.

If so, you cannot use the rest of the disk, because your BIOS or old IDE driver
do not support larger disks. Instead it overwrites at the beginning.
Click to expand...
 
Eric said:
If you had used Disk Manager instead, it would likely show only 128GB.

If so, you cannot use the rest of the disk, because your BIOS or old IDE driver
do not support larger disks. Instead it overwrites at the beginning.
Click to expand...

Do you mean Disk Management in Win2k?
It showed that the drive was all free space
 
Bob H said:
Do you mean Disk Management in Win2k?
It showed that the drive was all free space
Click to expand...
That happens when the MBR is overwritten. It can be recreated with findpart.

Does it show 128GB or 150GB?
 
Eric said:
If you had used Disk Manager instead, it would likely show only 128GB.

If so, you cannot use the rest of the disk, because your BIOS or old IDE driver
do not support larger disks. Instead it overwrites at the beginning.
Click to expand...

I think that's a pretty good guess of what happened. The disk
addressing "wrapped around" and over-wrote the start of the disk where
some important stuff like partitioning info resides.
 
Eric said:
That happens when the MBR is overwritten. It can be recreated with findpart.

Does it show 128GB or 150GB?
Click to expand...
Well, it showed 157Gb of freespace, but as I said I have re partitioned now
 
CJT said:
I think that's a pretty good guess of what happened. The disk
addressing "wrapped around" and over-wrote the start of the disk where
some important stuff like partitioning info resides.
Click to expand...

Ok, I think someone else said that, so what would cause that then?
Is it something to do with 48bit lba?

Thanks
 
CJT said:
Yes. It's everything to do with 48 bit lba.
Click to expand...
I thought so. Too b****y late tho! I lost a few media files I had
downloaded, and a lot of music files as well. Oh well, lesson learned
I have EnableBigLba = 1 now in my registry
'Oh bugger' said Bungle
At least the disk is not kaput or going that way then.

Thanks
 
If you had used Disk Manager instead, it would likely show only 128GB.

If so, you cannot use the rest of the disk, because your BIOS or old IDE driver
do not support larger disks. Instead it overwrites at the beginning.
Click to expand...

It should be noticed that Disk Manager is not reliable. If the disk is
partitioned for more than 128 GB, Windows 2000 Disk Manager will show
the partitioned size. It will not show the size that Windows can
access, or give any warnings.
 
It should be noticed that Disk Manager is not reliable. If the disk is
partitioned for more than 128 GB, Windows 2000 Disk Manager will show
the partitioned size. It will not show the size that Windows can
access, or give any warnings.
Click to expand...

Some additional information is available here:

http://www.partitionsupport.com/win2000/

For the 2000 and 2000a pictures, the BIOS supports the disk size,
which is 160 GB.

The only tool which reliable can tell the disk size that Windows 2000
recognizes is Findpart. As far as I know :-)
 
Some additional information is available here:

http://www.partitionsupport.com/win2000/

For the 2000 and 2000a pictures, the BIOS supports the disk size,
which is 160 GB.

The only tool which reliable can tell the disk size that Windows 2000
recognizes is Findpart. As far as I know :-)
Click to expand...

I assume you use IOCTL_DISK_GET_DRIVE_GEOMETRY, and Disk Managment uses LDM
service. Dskprobe's Volume Information should also work, and mbrwiz /list
(mbr.bigr.net).
 
I assume you use IOCTL_DISK_GET_DRIVE_GEOMETRY, and Disk Managment uses LDM
service. Dskprobe's Volume Information should also work, and mbrwiz /list
(mbr.bigr.net).
Click to expand...

Yes, I use that method.

I found the correct information in Windows 2000 too, in "Computer
Management, System Tools, System Information, Components, Storage,
Drives".
 
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