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HDD Cannot be repartitioned.

Discussion in 'Tech Support' started by spoon13, 10 Oct 2006.

  1. spoon13

    spoon13 What's a Dremel?

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    Ok so heres the deal; I was installing ubuntu when the installer froze during a partition resize (yay!); Now I cant repartition anything on the drive, cant reset the MBR, cant delete the partitions in any way. I have tried using partition magic 8 (DOS w/ ignore partition error flag set), recovery console in XP install and even went as far as an attempt to low level format the drive with the manufacturers software. Nothing has worked because in the end it says "Cannot write to MBR" as an error and the partition tables are reported as "bad".

    Ive been building computers for a long time and I honestly thought I had run into every partition issue imaginable, but I was wrong.

    Does anyone have any ideas beyond what I have already tried?

    Thanks
     
  2. DougEdey

    DougEdey I pwn all your storage

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    Goto the recovery console, run fixmbr and fixboot
     
  3. spoon13

    spoon13 What's a Dremel?

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    Tried both those; forgot to mention that I tried those specifically from recover console. Unfortunately neither worked. :( Saying disk geometry is wrong and cant save to MBR.
     
  4. DougEdey

    DougEdey I pwn all your storage

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    You tried UBCD?
     
  5. Burnout21

    Burnout21 Mmmm biscuits

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    That dosen't sound good. good luck
     
  6. airchie

    airchie What's a Dremel?

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    Yeah, UBCD should have something that can completely wipe the drive and let you start afresh. :)
     
  7. spoon13

    spoon13 What's a Dremel?

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    Yeah, I have UBCD and tried a few tools from there... mainly anything that had MBR in the title and I tried I believe it was called Randish partition manager, but all give a LBA write error; which I unfortunately have no idea how to fix. Ill look on the UBCD site and try to see what software specifically can wipe the drive though and give it a shot during my lunch hour. :)

    Thanks
     
  8. DougEdey

    DougEdey I pwn all your storage

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    If not, and its still under warranty, send it back under rma
     
  9. spoon13

    spoon13 What's a Dremel?

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    Well, hopefully something will work because its a laptop harddrive in a IBM thinkpad t30 so unfortunately rma isnt an option. :( Worse case, ill just pickup a new one from ebay but I would hope I wouldnt need to and Ill be pretty damn pissed that a simple task like an ubuntu install killed it. Considering Ive installed debian, slackware and other distros that are considered harder to install and everything worked then Ill be pretty mad that something as userfriendly as ubuntu destroyed my hdd.
     
  10. DougEdey

    DougEdey I pwn all your storage

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    What drive is it?


    ***EDIT****

    Googling from the error message i got to this:
    http://www.mandrivaexpert.com/showarchive.php?arc=1086

    I assume they mean a mandriva rescue mode, but I suspect any linux CD in rescue mode could do it.
     
    Last edited: 10 Oct 2006
  11. spoon13

    spoon13 What's a Dremel?

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    Yeah, I found that on google a while ago and tried it but even though I got no errors, it didnt change anything. :(

    I think I may have to face the fact that its time to replace the drive; not even the manufacturers low level utilities worked. :( Its a Hitachi.
     
  12. severedhead

    severedhead What's a Dremel?

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    Debug the HDD? Might work where other things have failed. Although could completely trash the drive if it goes wrong.
     
  13. spoon13

    spoon13 What's a Dremel?

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    Yeah, I tried that too a couple of nights ago with no luck. I think ive exhausted all options at this point so Ill just order a new drive. :( I remember doing the debug scripts with customers over the phone while working for dell tech support... fun stuff. :)
     
  14. severedhead

    severedhead What's a Dremel?

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    Yeah I had to do that the other day. Not fun with customers who have no idea.
     
  15. spoon13

    spoon13 What's a Dremel?

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    haha, thats like 99% of customers. :) I remember having a lady who kept telling me she was putting the CD in the drive but was really slipping it through the bay faceplate gaps! Drove me crazy trying to figure out why her CDrom wasnt reading discs. :) Also had a dwarf call screaming at me because his tower was too big... I suggested a laptop because I didnt know he was a man of small stature and I got screamed at by him and laughed at by my managers that were listening in. :(

    Ahhh the joys of technical support!
     
  16. sheepgoat

    sheepgoat What's a Dremel?

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    i had a similiar problem with a failed ghost not too long ago. have you tried booting from a win98 boot disk and using fdisk to delete the partition? or depending on the manufacturer of the drive you might get a tool that you can do a low lvl format.
     
  17. h_2_o

    h_2_o What's a Dremel?

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    well if you do not mind getting rid of everything i use a utility called zapdisk and it has yet to fail me. go make a dos boot disk from bootdisk.com and then go download zapdisk http://www.websmithing.com/zapdisk.htm boot to dos, type zapdisk and let it zap it. then start over :)

    gl
     
  18. spoon13

    spoon13 What's a Dremel?

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    I have already tried the win98 boot disk w/fdisk to delete and reset the MBR with no luck. :( I also already tried to low level with several different utilities including the manufacturer provided utilities.

    Ill give zapdisk a shot and post here with my results; thanks for the recommendations guys. :)
     
  19. spoon13

    spoon13 What's a Dremel?

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    Wow!

    I admit; I have tried every low level and zero fill trick I knew and heard about... none worked. Zapdisk worked the first time around! Thanks h_2_o, Im so damn happy that you told me about that proggie, im saving it for the future!

    Thanks to everyone for their suggestions!
     

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