What doesn't make sense about using another OS to create and format partitions?
Sometimes another OS can see things MSoft cannot. I frequently use other OS loads for testing various things that people need help with.
I have many drives that have seen many versions of many OSs. I have lately been through a myriad of loads of Server2000 and Server2003 on some of these drives - once I cross the threshold of a long NTFS format they are becoming doorstops at an alarming rate.
I have been using the long format because some of the information I have seen from MSoft and some of it's gurus seem to indicate that the long format is necessary for a contiguous MFT (The 8 thats left when a partition is created under XP).
I have never even considered using anything but NTFS for many long years now. And since we are perhaps on the cusp of leaving the FAT16-32 stuff behind, I have a tendancy to burn those older FAT partions and create NTFS partitions.
Funny thing is every time I have run into an existing NTFS partition and began again this tends to be happening. On systems that have 95-98 that I have nuked, mostly no problems. I say mostly, because I did change my mind about how I wanted to set up an old laptop. I decided that since XP seems to need about 20gb for its care and feeding that I would go to a larger drive on that laptop to accomodate XP and park my data in the same partition. I changed my mind about parking my data in the same partition and did a partition delete and recreate to build 2. Bad idea - that brand new hard drive is now a coaster for my Dr. Pepper until I can find a cure for what ails it. Its been into three other laptops with simular results - though closer at times than others to completion of an XP install. It ran like a champ right up to the moment I did the deed, only a few weeks - but no problems.
I have piles of drives that get regular abuse as different OSs I need for testing, etc. are loaded. Doing the same types of things I have always done is leaving me with old dead drives (RIP) and dead new ones - or - seemingly dead. Hard Drive Mechanic just makes that awful sound that the heads make when they are taking another look at the same spot over and over again. PC Certify would be great if they would call me back to activate the product that I spent a hundred and fifty bucks there (waste), and a variety of other tools just seem to disappear into never never land like they don't know what they are seeing.
I know I have some bad habits that I use for some of my old drives and systems - for instance I use a bulk eraser (big nasty AC powered magnet) to nuke old 200 mb SCSI drives that I run in an old PS/2 for OS/2 and UNIX. It kills me that I can literally pick up a drive with this eraser - scramble its bits into oblivion and pu it back in that PS/2 and partition it with Solaris again. Not something I would try with any of my atapi stuff - hell, I don't even leave the magnet in the same room with my XP experiments. I even bought myself a new Dell and nuked it right out of the box because I didn't want all the crap that comes on a new laptop - quick format and running fine.
I would love to chalk it up to flaky hardware but that what has already been beat to death ( I have put together a lot of systems in the last 15 years and drive deaths out of the box just don't happen at this rate on this many different boxes with everything from base Rambus memory from the factory (Gateway) to PNY pc266 DDR memory in a nine month old Toshiba Satelite with a BIOS update to v2.10)
The manufacturers tools seem to be showing geometry just fine, no bad blocks, yadda yadda. The diagnostic tools seem to be having the same problem as NTFS, if NTFS has had at least one bad experience on the drive. Name a drive, I probably have at least one holding my books up now, and the pile of diskettes that accompany it.
Again what I am trying to find out is if there is a common thread here because I am seeing an awful lot of posts that have a simular feel in the ways that XP is going casters up. I like XP a lot, I don't want to walk a lot of my clients back into Windows 2000 if I can help it. I even have some that are wanting their 98 back (kill me now...) and these systems are dying before I even arrive (it happened before I was ever born...) with novice users walking through repartioning, screwing up and running out to Staples to buy another drive to replace the 4 month old Quantum out of the clone sitting next to the coffee maker and the water cooler. Then they call me and I 'm getting the same results.
Iv'e been looking at all the basics for several months here. I have spent a ton of money on new drives, systems, memory, books, diags, even nuking my old trusty sytems to experiment with XP. Bottom line is I have created more coffee coasters in the last six months with XP only than I have in 15 years total of doing this with a smorgasboard of OSs.
I even gave up on XP for a while and went to 7.3 and 9.0 Linux (again, kill me now...). I also have a client with a brand new Dell that I partioned down to 40 gig so I could use the rest for Virus quarantine box off of their server. It's been up for four weeks now with perhaps 7 reboots and power downs with no bad messages coming up on it yet, though the event log now shows that it gets controller errors on boot, no more after running for days. I am terrified to touch it for fear I'll be bleeding some more cash and time to fix it if the BSOD comes and takes the drive away.
I'm desperate here and because I have a long history of being able to fix nasty problems I'm stcuk with a bunch of these. If the client has the petty cash to do it I'm buying new drives and they are dying too. All when I touch them with NTFS more than once for whatever reason. My clients that can like having their new systems on a single XP keyed through VLA thus the nuking of a preinstalled XP home license on systems purchased off the shelf or off the net. same results. How can this many manufacturers have flaky hardware in this many different locations at the same time? No common factor except for one: NTFS.
----- Sharon F wrote: -----
a variety of client locations over the last month on at least ten
different hard drives - out of perhaps 80-90 installs,
Okay. You left that part out in your last missive. As written there were
obvious blanks in the story and didn't want to fill them in on my own.
after the NTFS formatting failures I have tried with SCO Unis, Solaris
and RedHat 7.3 and 9. All of the Unix flavors can delete the existing
partions and create the new but fail on about 10-11% of formatting.
This part does not make sense however. XP is less forgiving if there is
flakey hardware but apparently no operating system can format these drives.
Have they been checked with disk tools from the manufacturers?
