Screwed my Hard Drive?

  • Thread starter Thread starter HereWeGoYetAgain
  • Start date Start date
H

HereWeGoYetAgain

I can't access my hard drive. It was fairly new (less than 1 year) which I use
with PM to copy partitions before I muck with them. I had about 15 logical
partitions and was in the middle of a partition copy when PM got an error and
failed turning the whole drive "yellow", bad. PM 4, 7 and 8 try but can't
delete it. I don't need to recover the partitions just the drive. Fdisk hangs,
Paragon Hard Disk Manager 6 hangs and Gdisk (not to experienced with this one)
tells me can't access disk due to too many partitions. I need to wipe the
partition table, I think but don't know how to do to. Can anybody help me clean
this thing?
 
HereWeGoYetAgain said:
I can't access my hard drive. It was fairly new (less than 1 year) which I use
with PM to copy partitions before I muck with them. I had about 15 logical
partitions and was in the middle of a partition copy when PM got an error and
failed turning the whole drive "yellow", bad. PM 4, 7 and 8 try but can't
delete it. I don't need to recover the partitions just the drive. Fdisk hangs,
Paragon Hard Disk Manager 6 hangs and Gdisk (not to experienced with this one)
tells me can't access disk due to too many partitions. I need to wipe the
partition table, I think but don't know how to do to. Can anybody help me clean
this thing?
Click to expand...

Go to the manufacturers website and download their drive utilitiy. You
should be able to at least ZERO the drive and after that everything should
work with it.

Other tools (FDISK /MBR, etc.) might be able to get the drive to a state
where you could repartition, but if you want to be sure, just ZERO the
drive.
 
HereWeGoYetAgain said:
I can't access my hard drive. It was fairly new (less than 1 year)
which I use with PM to copy partitions before I muck with them. I had
about 15 logical partitions and was in the middle of a partition copy
when PM got an error and failed turning the whole drive "yellow",
bad. PM 4, 7 and 8 try but can't delete it. I don't need to recover
the partitions just the drive. Fdisk hangs, Paragon Hard Disk Manager
6 hangs and Gdisk (not to experienced with this one) tells me can't
access disk due to too many partitions. I need to wipe the partition
table, I think but don't know how to do to. Can anybody help me clean
this thing?
Click to expand...

Sorry if this is a dumb question but why would one want 15 partitions? I
have over a dozen drives and they all have one partition each. Each drive is
dedicated to separate files like video and music. Would I gain anything by
partitioning a 200G drive full of video files into multiple partitions as
opposed to folders?

J.
 
Jimmy said:
Sorry if this is a dumb question but why would one want 15 partitions? I
have over a dozen drives and they all have one partition each. Each drive is
dedicated to separate files like video and music. Would I gain anything by
partitioning a 200G drive full of video files into multiple partitions as
opposed to folders?
Click to expand...

I can't speak for the OP, but I can describe a scenario with a lot of
partitions on one hard drive. At one time, I kept such a drive with
multiple 700 Mb partitions because I was building CD-rom images --
installers for multiple product lines/versions.
 
Sorry if this is a dumb question but why would one want 15 partitions? I
have over a dozen drives and they all have one partition each. Each drive is
dedicated to separate files like video and music. Would I gain anything by
partitioning a 200G drive full of video files into multiple partitions as
opposed to folders?
Click to expand...

As opposed to folders?...yes.

But, since you have separate, dedicated drives, you have just as good
a system.

Partitions/drives are better than folders when it comes to
maintenance. You don't need to defrag a dedicated partition/drive.
Also, accessing system/operating files is quicker when the drive isn't
also crowded with specific data (video, etc.) files.

Moreover, you can designate a specific cluster size for specific type
files when you have a dedicated partition/drive. I keep the clusters
for my regular operating files at 8k. But my multi-media partitions
are set to 32k...since the files going here are usually very
large...so there is little waste with a large cluster size for these
files.

I find 4k default clusters are usually too slow on most drives.


Have a nice one...

Trent©

Budweiser: Helping ugly people have sex since 1876!
 
Trent© said:
As opposed to folders?...yes.

But, since you have separate, dedicated drives, you have just as good
a system.

Partitions/drives are better than folders when it comes to
maintenance. You don't need to defrag a dedicated partition/drive.
Also, accessing system/operating files is quicker when the drive isn't
also crowded with specific data (video, etc.) files.

Moreover, you can designate a specific cluster size for specific type
files when you have a dedicated partition/drive. I keep the clusters
for my regular operating files at 8k. But my multi-media partitions
are set to 32k...since the files going here are usually very
large...so there is little waste with a large cluster size for these
files.

I find 4k default clusters are usually too slow on most drives.


Have a nice one...

Trent©

Budweiser: Helping ugly people have sex since 1876!
Click to expand...

Thank you. That was the best explaination I have heard so far.

Regards.
J.
 
Noozer"
download their drive utilitiy. You
Click to expand...

It hangs

Fdisk /mbr, works I think, well it "comes back" with :A
but then fdisk after that hangs



Lots of reasons, I used this drive as a backup
for images of my sisters, bothers, friends, clients
pc's, "fresh" copies of Win98se, W2k, Xp etc,
copies of my system when I want to experiment etc.

I like that :)
 
HWGYA said:
It hangs


Fdisk /mbr, works I think, well it "comes back" with :A
but then fdisk after that hangs




Lots of reasons, I used this drive as a backup
for images of my sisters, bothers, friends, clients
pc's, "fresh" copies of Win98se, W2k, Xp etc,
Click to expand...

So do you think if I have a backup drive that has different file types like
photos and software I should definitely separate them into various
partitions instead of just folders? The I am guessing that the partitions I
use the most will only be that part of the drive I would be defragging. This
sound more effective if I have this right.

Thanks.

J.
 
I can't access my hard drive. It was fairly new (less than 1 year) which I use
with PM to copy partitions before I muck with them. I had about 15 logical
partitions and was in the middle of a partition copy when PM got an error and
failed turning the whole drive "yellow", bad. PM 4, 7 and 8 try but can't
delete it. I don't need to recover the partitions just the drive.
Click to expand...

Do a low level format (zero fill) with debug.exe from DOS:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q106419/


Regards,
Chris
 
Back
Top