Hard Drive Partition Malfunction

[The Ice Man Cometh]

I have a WDC 120GB HDD on IDE 1 as a primary drive. The drive is in 2
partitions. C as 25GB and D as 87Gb. I also have a seperate IBM 30Gb Drive
on IDE 1 as a slave. IDE 2 is a DVD/CDRW as a slave. All drives are
formatted in FAT32.

My problem is with the WDC drive. If the PC has been switched on for
several hours it will freeze and you can only reset or switch off. On
restarting the C Drive(25Gb partition) becomes unformatted and RAW. All I
can do is to reformat and re-install.

Has anyone else experinced this problem.

To try and over come this I have now put a brand new Hitachi 40GB HDD as the
primary on IDE 1, formatted in NTFS (from XP pro installation) and installed
XP pro SP2 and left the IBM as a slave drive on IDE 1, stillin FAT32. I
have put the WDC as the master on IDE 2 and reformatted to one partion in
NTFS and left the DVD/CDRW where it is.

Is what I have done ok!! What I dont want, is for the large drive to go
tits up on me as I am using it for Video editing to transfer to DVD in the
future.

I have run drive diagnostics and it found nothing. I have even done a low
level format on the WDC to make sure there is nothing funny in where the
partitions were.

Any help would be appreciated.

Simon Willcox
The Ice Man Cometh

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

What is your hardware configuration? Processor, memory, motherboard? Have
you inserted the XP cd and run the compatibility checker?

 

[The Ice Man Cometh]

Colin,

I am running a Intel PIII 750 with 512Mb RAM. No idea on Mobo. Yes
compatibilty check done originally. Have been running XP for nearly 2
years. This problem has only started in the last few weeks. No other
hardware or software added to make a corruption. The only new configuration
is the new Hitachi drive whichI added today because of this.

 

[Ross Durie]

To eliminate the HDD as being an issue run the diagnostic software from
http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp#diagutils. I would run the
diagnostics with all drives connected then remove the IBM drive, retest etc.

 

[Ron Martell]

I have a WDC 120GB HDD on IDE 1 as a primary drive. The drive is in 2
partitions. C as 25GB and D as 87Gb. I also have a seperate IBM 30Gb Drive
on IDE 1 as a slave. IDE 2 is a DVD/CDRW as a slave. All drives are
formatted in FAT32.

My problem is with the WDC drive. If the PC has been switched on for
several hours it will freeze and you can only reset or switch off. On
restarting the C Drive(25Gb partition) becomes unformatted and RAW. All I
can do is to reformat and re-install.

Has anyone else experinced this problem.

To try and over come this I have now put a brand new Hitachi 40GB HDD as the
primary on IDE 1, formatted in NTFS (from XP pro installation) and installed
XP pro SP2 and left the IBM as a slave drive on IDE 1, stillin FAT32. I
have put the WDC as the master on IDE 2 and reformatted to one partion in
NTFS and left the DVD/CDRW where it is.

Is what I have done ok!! What I dont want, is for the large drive to go
tits up on me as I am using it for Video editing to transfer to DVD in the
future.

I have run drive diagnostics and it found nothing. I have even done a low
level format on the WDC to make sure there is nothing funny in where the
partitions were.

Any help would be appreciated.

Simon Willcox
The Ice Man Cometh

Try moving the IBM drive to the secondary IDE controller as the master
drive.

Drives from different manufacturers, especially when there is a
difference of more than 3 or 4 years in the date of manufacture of the
drives, sometimes have problems when connected as master and slave on
the same IDE channel.

I have encountered this type of problem a few times, and moving the
drives to different IDE controllers resolved the issue for me in all
of these instances.

Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."