Just trying to resize an 80GB NTFS partition so I could add a drive and all
went crazy (as did I, as you will see). Didn't have floppy installed, so
used Gpartd to resize and during process it said internal error, no go.
Tried Partition Magic and completed partition deletions, create NTFS, and
when booted to Xp, it would get to point of "starting windows" and then
would error out saying no hard drive. Western Digital couldn't help. Said I
needed a linux disk utility to zero out hard drive. Just tried win98se
fdisk, and ended up with a fully (not really) formatted hard drive, set
primary and active, but only registers 10GB, not 80. Help! Just want to use
XP. Not even interested in 2 NTFS drives anymore, so bummed out.

Al Botteon wrote:
> Just trying to resize an 80GB NTFS partition so I could add a drive and
> all went crazy (as did I, as you will see). Didn't have floppy
> installed, so used Gpartd to resize and during process it said internal
> error, no go. Tried Partition Magic and completed partition deletions,
> create NTFS, and when booted to Xp, it would get to point of "starting
> windows" and then would error out saying no hard drive.

To solve this part use a tool that will let you zero out the boot sector.

> Western Digital
> couldn't help. Said I needed a linux disk utility to zero out hard
> drive. Just tried win98se fdisk, and ended up with a fully (not really)
> formatted hard drive, set primary and active, but only registers 10GB,
> not 80. Help! Just want to use XP. Not even interested in 2 NTFS
> drives anymore, so bummed out.

Don't use w98's fdisk for that 80G hdd.

Get your boot sector zeroed then use one of those tools like gparted or PM
to set up the disk, and then go.



--
Mike Easter

"Mike Easter" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> Al Botteon wrote:
>> Just trying to resize an 80GB NTFS partition so I could add a drive and
>> all went crazy (as did I, as you will see). Didn't have floppy
>> installed, so used Gpartd to resize and during process it said internal
>> error, no go. Tried Partition Magic and completed partition deletions,
>> create NTFS, and when booted to Xp, it would get to point of "starting
>> windows" and then would error out saying no hard drive.
>
> To solve this part use a tool that will let you zero out the boot sector.
>
I don't know how to zero out boot sector. This is what Western Digital said
to do

Al Botteon wrote:
> Just trying to resize an 80GB NTFS partition so I could add a drive and all
> went crazy (as did I, as you will see). Didn't have floppy installed, so
> used Gpartd to resize and during process it said internal error, no go.
> Tried Partition Magic and completed partition deletions, create NTFS, and
> when booted to Xp, it would get to point of "starting windows" and then
> would error out saying no hard drive. Western Digital couldn't help. Said I
> needed a linux disk utility to zero out hard drive. Just tried win98se
> fdisk, and ended up with a fully (not really) formatted hard drive, set
> primary and active, but only registers 10GB, not 80. Help! Just want to use
> XP. Not even interested in 2 NTFS drives anymore, so bummed out.
>

I'm not clear on what you're trying to achieve. Were you originally
trying to preserve disk contents when you were resizing ? And now
you've decided to blow the disk away and start over ?

DBAN from sourceforge, can be used to erase a disk sector by sector.
Even the "quick erase" isn't very quick. By erasing a disk, then installing
WinXP from scratch, WinXP should be able to do the whole thing as one
partition. If the WinXP installer disk is slipstreamed to some
Service Pack level, you should be able to make relatively large
partitions (I used SP3 for example, to make a single partition on
my spare 250GB SATA drive).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBAN

This port of "dd" might be able to erase a disk. If the purpose
is to get the WinXP installer CD to start all over again and
treat the disk as one partition.

http://www.chrysocome.net/dd

dd if=/dev/zero of=\\?\Device\Harddisk0\Partition0 bs=512 count=1000

That should wipe out the beginning of Harddisk0, so there is no longer
an MBR or partition table. I usually do stuff like that in Linux. But
maybe that dd would run from DOS. I haven't tried it from DOS, but
have tested dd.exe from a command prompt window in WinXP, using the
--list option to get the names of the disks.

dd --list (an option of the chrysocome "dd")

There is a free partition manager here, but you'd need an OS to run it from.

EASEUS Partition
http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm

In Linux, you can prep a disk as well. You can use the Linux "fdisk"
command to set up partitions. The mk---- type programs can make a
file system on each partition after you're finished. I think you can
make FAT32 or NTFS partitions while in Linux, as well as the more
normal EXT2 for Linux.

But at this point, I'm not clear on where you are now, and what is
left on the disk. That EASEUS might be able to resize your current
10GB FAT32 volume. And the WinXP "convert" command can convert a
FAT32 partition, to NTFS (I understand it doesn't go from NTFS to
FAT32, so you cannot go backwards with it).

From Windows Help and Support

convert drive_letter: /fs:ntfs

HTH,
Paul

Al Botteon wrote:
> "Mike Easter

>>> deletions, create NTFS, and when booted to Xp, it would get to point
>>> of "starting windows" and then would error out saying no hard drive.
>>
>> To solve this part use a tool that will let you zero out the boot
>> sector.
>>
> I don't know how to zero out boot sector. This is what Western Digital
> said to do

The last time I had trouble with junk in the boot sector that was hard to
get rid of with normal mbr restorations and 'cleaning' tools, I used some
kind of sector editor to manually zero it -- but I don't remember what I
used. It seems like it might've been on Hiren's boot disk, which someone
said was a little piraty.

Where 'someone' was citing the wikipedia article on hiren's and to me 'a
little piraty' means more gray than black, where 'black' means definitely
piraty.



--
Mike Easter

I would post in the storage group too.

John wrote:
> "Al Botteon"

>> I don't know how to zero out boot sector. This is what Western Digital
>> said to do
>>
>
> Pretty sure it's one of the Western Digital Data Lifeguard Tools - you
> can download from
> http://support.wdc.com/product/downl...d200bb&x=6&y=6
>
> I've used it before but it's been awhile

When I was working on my little problem, it was a WD drive and I couldn't
get the job done with WD tools.

Hiren's has an ancient 2002 Norton Disk Editor on it.
http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd All in One Bootable CD which has all
these utilities - Hard Disk Tools - Norton Disk Editor 2002 - a powerful
disk editing, manual data recovery tool.


Cone in on sector zero and starting zeroing the hex.

--
Mike Easter

"John" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
On Tue, 31 Mar 2009 09:40:42 -0700, "Mike Easter" <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

>John wrote:
>> "Al Botteon"
>
>>> I don't know how to zero out boot sector. This is what Western Digital
>>> said to do
>>>
>>
>> Pretty sure it's one of the Western Digital Data Lifeguard Tools - you
>> can download from
>> http://support.wdc.com/product/downl...d200bb&x=6&y=6
>>
>> I've used it before but it's been awhile
>
>When I was working on my little problem, it was a WD drive and I couldn't
>get the job done with WD tools.
>

>I found my floppy for Data Lifeguard ver 11 and it will zero the drive.

I tried my Data Lifeguard and it booted to tell me it couldn't find a hard
drive

John wrote:
> "Mike Easter"

>> When I was working on my little problem, it was a WD drive and I
>> couldn't get the job done with WD tools.
>>
>
> I found my floppy for Data Lifeguard ver 11 and it will zero the drive.

Not the boot sector (as I recall).


--
Mike Easter

"Paul" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:gqtevk$nfb$(E-Mail Removed)...
> Al Botteon wrote:
>> Just trying to resize an 80GB NTFS partition so I could add a drive and
>> all went crazy (as did I, as you will see). Didn't have floppy installed,
>> so used Gpartd to resize and during process it said internal error, no
>> go. Tried Partition Magic and completed partition deletions, create NTFS,
>> and when booted to Xp, it would get to point of "starting windows" and
>> then would error out saying no hard drive. Western Digital couldn't help.
>> Said I needed a linux disk utility to zero out hard drive. Just tried
>> win98se fdisk, and ended up with a fully (not really) formatted hard
>> drive, set primary and active, but only registers 10GB, not 80. Help!
>> Just want to use XP. Not even interested in 2 NTFS drives anymore, so
>> bummed out.
>
> I'm not clear on what you're trying to achieve. Were you originally
> trying to preserve disk contents when you were resizing ? And now
> you've decided to blow the disk away and start over ?
>
> DBAN from sourceforge, can be used to erase a disk sector by sector.
> Even the "quick erase" isn't very quick. By erasing a disk, then
> installing
> WinXP from scratch, WinXP should be able to do the whole thing as one
> partition. If the WinXP installer disk is slipstreamed to some
> Service Pack level, you should be able to make relatively large
> partitions (I used SP3 for example, to make a single partition on
> my spare 250GB SATA drive).
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBAN
>
> This port of "dd" might be able to erase a disk. If the purpose
> is to get the WinXP installer CD to start all over again and
> treat the disk as one partition.
>
> http://www.chrysocome.net/dd
>
> dd if=/dev/zero of=\\?\Device\Harddisk0\Partition0 bs=512 count=1000
>
> That should wipe out the beginning of Harddisk0, so there is no longer
> an MBR or partition table. I usually do stuff like that in Linux. But
> maybe that dd would run from DOS. I haven't tried it from DOS, but
> have tested dd.exe from a command prompt window in WinXP, using the
> --list option to get the names of the disks.
>
> dd --list (an option of the chrysocome "dd")
>
> There is a free partition manager here, but you'd need an OS to run it
> from.
>
> EASEUS Partition
> http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm
>
> In Linux, you can prep a disk as well. You can use the Linux "fdisk"
> command to set up partitions. The mk---- type programs can make a
> file system on each partition after you're finished. I think you can
> make FAT32 or NTFS partitions while in Linux, as well as the more
> normal EXT2 for Linux.
>
> But at this point, I'm not clear on where you are now, and what is
> left on the disk. That EASEUS might be able to resize your current
> 10GB FAT32 volume. And the WinXP "convert" command can convert a
> FAT32 partition, to NTFS (I understand it doesn't go from NTFS to
> FAT32, so you cannot go backwards with it).
>
> From Windows Help and Support
>
> convert drive_letter: /fs:ntfs
>
> HTH,
> Paul

I'm so ****ed. I just sat for more than 3 hours while DBAN zeroed out
everything. Said worked fine. Rebooted and put in xp and it couldn't find
HD. Put in Partition Magic diskettes and created a partition. Still no HD
when booted from xp. What's Up!