Invalid Media Type - Part 2

[DonLogan]

Had disk corruption, which I asked for help on - see below. Took the
advice and moved to XP. Hate to do this because it's $180 for an OS
that's locked to an old machine. Oh well.
So loaded XP, reformatted the disk (ntfs using seagate utils), and
upgraded the bios (asus P4B motherboard with a P4 2gig).
This time an application hung when writing to D at about the 137 gig
mark. And invaid media type again!
Had to reformat again.
Everything says this is a 200 gig partition except for HD Tune, who
says its a 128.0 GB (~137.4GB) disk in the info tab, at the bottom.
But in the Partition / Drive letter / Label / Capacity/ it says 190779
MB??
Where should I look to find the problem? I suspect it's the disk but I
did reformat.
thanks


---------------------------------
Running W98. Have two disks, c: & d:
D is a 200gig, one partition, data drive. Left a program copying data
to d: overnight. This morning it said disk full, make some space.
Explorer saw d: but wouldn't give me any directory structure.
Looked at d:, over the network, from another machine & same thing.
Rebooted & I'm getting "Error 1 loading OS. May be due to a virus."
Then 4 options. Turned off virus check in bios & same thing. (think
this is some old disk >137 thing left over - will check later)

So booted from CD & get "invalid media type reading drive d. abort
retry fail"
Guess I have partition corruption? Any free utility to clean this up?

 

[Rod Speed]

Had disk corruption, which I asked for help on - see below. Took
the advice and moved to XP. Hate to do this because it's $180

You can get it for a hell of a lot less than that.

for an OS that's locked to an old machine.

No it isnt, you can move it to what replaces that.

Oh well. So loaded XP, reformatted the disk (ntfs using seagate utils),

Not a good idea, you should have used the XP install CD to do that.

and upgraded the bios (asus P4B motherboard with a P4 2gig).

You should have done that first, maybe you did.

This time an application hung when writing to D at
about the 137 gig mark. And invaid media type again!
Had to reformat again.

Everything says this is a 200 gig partition except for HD Tune, who
says its a 128.0 GB (~137.4GB) disk in the info tab, at the bottom.

Mine doesnt, so its not just some quirk of HD Tune unless thats system specific.

But in the Partition / Drive letter / Label / Capacity/ it says 190779 MB??

Where should I look to find the problem?

Which version of XP did you install ? You should be using SP2.
Safest to slipstream that onto the install CD if it doesnt have SP2 included.

I suspect it's the disk

Thats possible, but unlikely.

but I did reformat.

I'd do another clean install of XP with SP2 slipsteamed to eliminate
the possibility that its something to do with the seagate utes.

And try
http://www.48bitlba.com/hdinfo.htm
and see what it says about 48bit LBA support.

If that doesnt fix it, I'd check the contents of the first physical sector
of the drive to see what the media type is actually set to before
writing anything much to the drive, and see what its set to after
the complaint to see if it is actually getting changed. And if the
drive is wrapping at the 137G point, that should damage a lot
more than just the media byte in that first physical sector too.