Partition Table problems (according to PartitionMagic 8)

[Carol Haynes]

I have a drive (120Gb WD Caviar) which is divided into 6 partition (1
Primary/Active and 5 Logical in an extended partition). They are all NTFS
partitions running under Windows XP SP2.

The problem I have is that all the partitions complete their check disks
fine, but Partition Magic marks the whole drive simply as BAD.

Does anyone know of any way to check the integrity of the partition table
and if there is a problem a way to fix it - preferably cheaply.

I have tried using the Rescue Console to FixBoot, but that doesn't seem to
make any difference. I have also examined the disk using DiskPart and that
reports all partitions to be healthy.

I'd rather not have to do a total reinstall if I can avoid it.

Thanks,

Carol Haynes

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I have a drive (120Gb WD Caviar) which is divided into 6 partition (1
Primary/Active and 5 Logical in an extended partition). They are all NTFS
partitions running under Windows XP SP2.

The problem I have is that all the partitions complete their check disks
fine, but Partition Magic marks the whole drive simply as BAD.

Does anyone know of any way to check the integrity of the partition table
and if there is a problem a way to fix it - preferably cheaply.

I have tried using the Rescue Console to FixBoot, but that doesn't seem to
make any difference. I have also examined the disk using DiskPart and that
reports all partitions to be healthy.

I'd rather not have to do a total reinstall if I can avoid it.

Thanks,

Carol Haynes

This usually happens when the drive geometry used by the file system
disagrees with the drive geometry selected in the BIOS. The BIOS
might be set to LBA whereas your partitions might have been created
and formatted when the geometry was set to LARGE.

 

[Richard Urban]

I ran into this very problem a few weeks back. The only fix, in my case, was
to delete all the partitions and then re-create/format new partitions.

In some cases the partition structure just can't be repaired due to the
nature of the corruption. I will say that once they are created, and test as
competent, I have not seen them change (unless the hard drive has problems).

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Mike Fields]

I have a drive (120Gb WD Caviar) which is divided into 6 partition (1
Primary/Active and 5 Logical in an extended partition). They are all NTFS
partitions running under Windows XP SP2.

The problem I have is that all the partitions complete their check disks
fine, but Partition Magic marks the whole drive simply as BAD.

Does anyone know of any way to check the integrity of the partition table
and if there is a problem a way to fix it - preferably cheaply.

I have tried using the Rescue Console to FixBoot, but that doesn't seem to
make any difference. I have also examined the disk using DiskPart and that
reports all partitions to be healthy.

I'd rather not have to do a total reinstall if I can avoid it.

Thanks,

Carol Haynes

I ran into something like this a year or two ago. Windows was fine
(98SE at
the time), however both "partition magic" and "drive image" would simply
blow up when I tried to even look at the disk with them. Finally came
to
the conclusion that there was some sort of a problem with the order the
partitions were listed in the table. Used the free ranish partition
manager
to change stuff around (just the order) and everybody was happy again.
Seems pretty stupid of "Partition magic" to simple exit with an unknown
error instead of even being able to look at the table (their freeware
"partinfo" didn't seem to have any problem looking at the table though.
http://www.ranish.com/part/ -- be careful though - you can really hose
things
up by changing the wrong thing.

mikey