Problems with harddrive

Mizipzor · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 05 Jun 2005 Posts: 105

Im not sure wether to put this here or in the "install gentoo" forums.

Anyways, there was a long time ago I managed to install and run my first linux dist (gentoo), since then Ive used a dualboot system to keep windows there. I use it mainly or games. However, the windows partition needs a reformat every third month or something to remain stable.

It was during one of these routine formats the problems begun. I have my first harddrive partitioned in four primary; the first one is for windows, then three for linux. I inserted the windows cd and during the installation I was asked where I wanted to install it. I deleted my current windows partition (50 GB showed up as unpartitioned) but then when I was about to create a new NTFS partition in the unused space, I was told it wasnt possible, the drive currently had to many partitions. But I thought the maximum was four primary partitions? Either way, I just had that setup.

I aborted the installation and took a ms dos floppy with fdisk program, through that I managed to create (and format) a NTFS partition in the unused space. I returned to the windows installation and installed it. When the installation was done I fired up Partition Magic 8.0, just to see if everything was ok. The entire harddrive (the windows and three linux partitions) was yellow, "BAD". Something was seriously wrong now I thought.

Still reading? Hope it isnt to long.

Anyways, I went back into the gentoo livecd and ran fdisk there. I got a warning said that the harddrive had 10011 cylinders, but it should have 1024. 10011 isnt even dividable by 8. Nothing to lose, I thought, I erased every partition from the harddrive through fdisk on gentoo live cd and entered advanced mode and manually set the cylinders to 1024. Dont get me wrong here, I know you shouldnt mock around with stuff you dont understand but I got several other harddrives so losing this one isnt much of a loss, especially since its only 80 GB. So I take this as a learning experience.

Now I reinstalled windows using all the space on the harddrive for the NTFS partition. But Partition Magic 8.0 yet again showed the entire harddrive as "BAD".

I dont really know what to do know. Sorry for the very long post but when there are problems that I dont understand, Ive found that I get better responses if I give all the info, relevant or not. Isnt there a good way to just completely "superformat" (

) a harddrive? I got nothing to lose, the info on the disk is already gone and I got other drives to replase it with.

Big thanks in advance.

FcukThisGame · l33t Joined: 20 Apr 2005 Posts: 776 Location: /lost+found

It sounds like your hard drive is bad. I had an old 30gb maxtor drive that was about 6 years old and I went through about four hours of gentoo installation to realize that the hard drive had half a trillion bad sectors. Try a different hard drive.

If PM is recognizing the partition as bad, that'd usually mean that there are bad sectors. When you load PM, go to the partitions marked as 'BAD' and right click, go to info. See if it tells you something to the extent of bad/corrupt sectors. If it says 'NTFS partition not properly unmounted, try rebooting windows, and shutdown through the desktop.
Windows at boot will check the NTFS partition for consistency if it has any reason to believe that there are bad sectors.

Boot windows, reboot properly to PM and see what it says. If it's still complaining, sounds like your hard drive is on its deathbed.
_________________
Sysadmin by trade, geek by choice

DESKTOP:
i7-3770K|8800GTS-512|32GB|1x256GB SSD|4x1TB|HD/BDROM|1920x1200+1680x1050
Win8 Pro w/ Hyper-V|Server 2012 VM|Ubuntu VM|Gentoo VM

TABLET: Samsung Ativ 700t
i5-3317U|4GB|128GB SSD|1920x1080 Touch
Win8

Mizipzor · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 05 Jun 2005 Posts: 105

I think the only information I ever got from PM was "BAD" when I right clicked and choosed "show info".

But it was just an 80 GB, easily replaced.

Are there any more programs I should try on the drive before I explain it retired?

FcukThisGame · l33t Joined: 20 Apr 2005 Posts: 776 Location: /lost+found