FDISK ruined drive?

[Rick Schu]

I seriously jacked a hard drive with FDISK. Was using a win98 startup
disk and tried deleting all the partitions on the drive, but couldn't.
Realized that the drive used to be a dual boot drive XP(NTFS) and
win98 - FDISK cannot delete NTFS partitions. So, I booted to the XP
setup disc and started deleting partitions from there - at that point
the XP setup locked up.

Now, no matter what, if this drive is connected to a system, the
system will not boot - not to a win98 startup floppy, not to the XP
setup cd, nothing. It will immediately freeze, right after attempting
to boot. The BIOS recognizes the drive just fine (jumper settings are
not the problem either). I've tried the drive by itself as the master,
as a slave with a known working drive. Disconnect the drive and the
system boots the floppy, etc just fine.

Took out the drive and put it in a another totally different system as
a slave drive. Does the exact same thing.

These systems are not booting the drive itself - I even removed it
from the boot order, but somehow, both the win98 startup disk and the
XP cd and even a Maxtor boot utility disk, and any additional hard
drive, all freeze when they begin to boot if this hard drive is
connected. It starts to boot - that is, the floppy drive is accesssed,
let's say, and then freezes.

What can I do?

 

[Rod Speed]

I seriously jacked a hard drive with FDISK. Was using a win98 startup
disk and tried deleting all the partitions on the drive, but couldn't.
Realized that the drive used to be a dual boot drive XP(NTFS) and
win98 - FDISK cannot delete NTFS partitions. So, I booted to the XP
setup disc and started deleting partitions from there - at that point
the XP setup locked up.

Now, no matter what, if this drive is connected to a system, the
system will not boot - not to a win98 startup floppy, not to the XP
setup cd, nothing. It will immediately freeze, right after attempting
to boot. The BIOS recognizes the drive just fine (jumper settings are
not the problem either). I've tried the drive by itself as the master,
as a slave with a known working drive. Disconnect the drive and the
system boots the floppy, etc just fine.

Took out the drive and put it in a another totally different
system as a slave drive. Does the exact same thing.

These systems are not booting the drive itself - I even removed it
from the boot order, but somehow, both the win98 startup disk and the
XP cd and even a Maxtor boot utility disk, and any additional hard
drive, all freeze when they begin to boot if this hard drive is
connected. It starts to boot - that is, the floppy drive is accesssed,
let's say, and then freezes.

What can I do?

Most likely the MBR is rather screwed and thats what prevents the startup.

Clean the drive with something like clearhdd from
http://www.samsung.com/Products/HardDiskDrive/utilities/clearhdd.htm
and partition and format again.

If that doesnt fix the problem, likely the drive has died coincidentally.

 

[Rick Schu]

Clean the drive with something like clearhdd from
http://www.samsung.com/Products/HardDiskDrive/utilities/clearhdd.htm
and partition and format again.

You can't boot to even a floppy if this drive is attached! It is
crazy. I completely remove the hard drive from the boot order - only
the floppy is on there. It starts to boot the floppy and freezes.
Disconnect drive, restart and floppy boots fine. Same thing happens
with bootable CD.

So, I can't even get to DOS to run anything.

When a floppy disk boots, apparently it acesses any hard drive for
some reason. This is where my problem starts. I even tried a plain
vanilla bootable floppy (command.com only) with the same problem.

 

[Rod Speed]

You can't boot to even a floppy if this drive is attached!
It is crazy. I completely remove the hard drive from the
boot order - only the floppy is on there. It starts to boot
the floppy and freezes. Disconnect drive, restart and
floppy boots fine. Same thing happens with bootable CD.

OK, likely the drive has just died and it was a coincidence
that that happened when you saw that after using fdisk.

So, I can't even get to DOS to run anything.

When a floppy disk boots, apparently it
acesses any hard drive for some reason.

Does the hard drive get its model number listed
on the black bios screen at boot time, before it even
starts to boot the floppy ? Most likely its actually
its the bios hard drive poll thats now failing and the
drive doesnt even get listed anymore, and thats the
problem, not the floppy boot at all.

This is where my problem starts. I even tried a plain vanilla
bootable floppy (command.com only) with the same problem.

What happens if you set the drive type
to NONE in the bios hard drive table ?

Its possible that the bios is getting royally confused
by the bad data in the MBR and its stalling on that.

If you can manage to boot the floppy with clearhdd on it
with the hard drive plugged in but with NONE in the bios
hard drive entry, clearhdd might be able to find it and clear it.

 

[Andy]

Try booting with a DR-DOS floppy. I believe it doesn't check the hard
drive.

 

[Svend Olaf Mikkelsen]

Try booting with a DR-DOS floppy. I believe it doesn't check the hard
drive.

Every DOS version reads the harddisk to determine drive letters.

DR-DOS (Caldera DOS) however does not hang if the partition tables are
cyclic.

If no data are on the disk, the disk can be set to none in BIOS, and
the MBR deleted with the manufacturer tool for that. Assuming the tool
uses direct disk access.