Re: [gentoo-user] low-level formatting a harddrive

[maxim wexler <blissfix@yahoo.com>]

--- krzaq <krzakers@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 10/18/05, maxim wexler <blissfix@yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> > Hello everbody,
> >
> > Maxtor suggests I do a low-level format of my
> flaky
> > Diamond 16 drive using their Powermax tool.
> > Unfortunately it doesn't give you the option of
> > sparing one partition or the other -- it does the
> > whole thing.
> >
> > I strongly suspect the problem lies on the first
> half
> > of the drive where XP-pro used to reside. Is there
> a
> > way to do a low-level format of part of a drive
> while
> > leaving the rest intact?
> If you have the drive partitioned you can
> 
> dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdaX
> 
> Where hdaX is the partition to zero out. This should
> be equivalent to a low level format.

Done, but problem remains: the start of the drive
seems un-writable for some reason. It won't even let
me install Win98!, get

run-time error R6003 integer divide by 0sk
setup found errors on your hard disk

I told the tech at Maxtor that it could boot linux
from another drive and *couldn't* boot MS products at
all.

He says, if the drive has errors then nothing will
work. Entire drive must be zeroed.

Would a true test involve zeroing the whole thing? I
don't see why if the file systems were always intact
even when XP-pro was installed(though not booting) on
the first half of this 120G HDrive.

I wonder if there isn't a tiny part of the drive that
comes before the first partition, like those first few
grooves on a vinyl record ;-)

> 
> PS:
> Have you tried running badblocks on it?

none found
> 
> --
> Regards
> Karol Krzak
> 
> -- 
> gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
> 
> 



	
		
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