hard disk error

[Steve T]

I tried to run chkdsk on my Home Edition unit. Running 2 HD, ZIP drive and a
DVD/RW. Which one of these is considered HD 3? Chkdsk won't start and Norton
SystemWorks says it is unable to obtain the physical disk characteristics
and is unable to test the partition information of the HD. The only
partition I have is a hidden one on C:\ that HP uses to store it's
repair/re-install OS utility. Thank you, Steve T.

 

[Patti MacLeod]

Hi Steve,

If the ZIP drive is an internal IDE drive, than it's probably the culprit. I
recall having trouble with Partition Magic a few years back (was always
receiving an "Invalid Partition Table" error), and after a lot of failed
troubleshooting, I found an article at PowerQuest's site that explained that
the error was caused by the setting in BIOS to autodetect the Zip
drive.....Partition Magic would attempt to read the partition table from the
detected Zip drive as if it were a hard drive. When I changed the BIOS
Settings to have the Zip drive (Primary Slave in my system) set to None
instead of Auto/Autodetect, all was well. See if changing the setting in
your system's BIOS to None for the channel on which your Zip drive is
connected (probably Secondary Slave, if it's being recognized as HDD-3)
solves the problem.


Regards,

 

[Steve T]

Thanks again, Patti. My ZIP was setup as Secondary Slave with AUTO detect. I
changed to NONE but I still got the same error message until I inserted a
ZIP disk into the drive and then ran chkdsk. Then I get an OK. Steve T