Hard disk problem

[soongmak]

I have a shiny new PC with two hard drives, and the second one is giving me grief. I only use this harddrive to store data, and I have two partitions on it. I suspect something went wrong with partitioning the drive, and every time I start up my PC, the hard disk gets automatically checked, but it never comes up with any problems. I want to erase the partitions and fully format the hard disk, but I have no idea to do this. he goal is to get a fully formatted non-partitioned hard disk.

I do have partition magic, but don't know if I can use it to do this trick.

 

anyone have any suggestions?

 

Thanks!

[ALHOLK]

Hi!

 

Make absolutely sure that you have a backup of any data you want to keep. You don't really need Partition Magic for this. I don't know if his will work under WindowsXP as I have never used it like this but if the mentioned programs are present it will.

 

Use the program "fdisk" to delete the existing partitions. Again remember that you will lose any data you have on the partitions when you do this. Use "fdisk" again to create a new partition that all free space on the disk. This program was made for computer savvy people so be sure that you go slowly and understand the help that is available. Also make absolutely sure that you are working on the right disk.

 

After you have created a new partition you have to format it. This is done with the program "format" and again this program was not written for computer novices so make sure that you know what you are doing and especially that you are working on the right disk.

 

All the above can be done with Partition Magic but it is basically overkill. This program has a graphical interface that might lure people into thinking that it makes things easy but the fact is that the operation described requires understanding of what you are doing.

 

Always remember that you should have backup copies of mission critical data even if you computers are running fine.

 

regards

 

ALHOLK

[carlton68]

Hi,

 

before you start to format your drive you might check it. The windows check at startup does not do a good job.

There are some progs that check your drives S.M.A.R.T data (try HD Tune, freeware). Maybe the drive already diagnosed a problem already. Second do a thourough check of your drive. Every maker has a prog for it's drives, maybe you try that. IBMs/Hitachis Drive Fitness Test works on all drives and I recommend that also for other makes than IBM/Hitachi. Download DFT, it creates a bootable floppy.

 

Alholk said it: backup!

 

When you want to format the drive partition magic does a good job. As other tools.

Maybe you get Ultimate Boot CD, it has loads of little tools for computer problems. It's a download of 150MB and creates a bootable CD. DFT is included on UBCD.

 

Good luck.

[short-time]

You didn?t mention your operating system, but since you have a ?new? computer I?ll assume you are running XP. Before reformatting you might want to try running:

 

Chkdsk /R X:

 

Where X is the drive letter you want checked. Enter the above by first selecting start then run.

 

ST

[billywan]

You can reformat the drive using FDisk but before you do you have to use fdisk to delete the extended partion so the disk has only one partition, then you can format it as a Drive with only one partition, it will sho :)uld not be identified as an active partition. Recently had to do this myself. Not to difficult to do, just use the appropriate options offered by FDisk.

[ALHOLK]

Hi!

 

I haven't used fdisk for some time so I might be wrong but if he deletes one partition and leaves the other untouched it will be formatted to it's current size. Consequently he will loose the part of the disk with the deleted partion. The way to go as I remeber is to delete both partitions and create a new one that covers all available space. The format program should read the partition table to see what it is supposed to format.

 

regards

 

ALHOLK

[keekwai]

Boot from a WinXP installation cd and when prompted select install Windows, you will eventually see a list of drives and partitions. Select the partitions you no longer want, select delete. You need to do one at a time. When finished it should show unallocated space for the deleted partitions. Exit the installation and use the computer management>disk management gui to create new partitions or you can create new ones while still booted to the cd.