Partitioning

[bskorte]

Hello, I have an hard drive that was givin to me made by seagate, I partitioned it and tried to format but everytime it starts to format, after 1 percent it comes up with a message say trying to recover allocation unit. It very slowly does this but usually cannot finish when it does And I start to install windows 98 SE, I can never complete it. so I tried running overkill on it (a program that writes 0's accross the hard drive) Still no help, what is trying to recover allocation unit and what can I do to get win on this hard drive? Any help is greatly appriciated!

[coolsights2000]

what is the drive number maybe you can find a file that you can download from seagate to recover the drive

http://www.seagate.com is there home page


I went to this page but i have no idea if it is right because I dont know the spec of your drive
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/drivers/index.html


Have you tried to FDISK it yet with a windows 98 start up disk(fdisk is on the recover disk that you should have made when you started your other drive up)..............this will setup the partion
delete all partitioning then add one new partition dos bootable

I like to Fdisk a drive first then let the windows setup disk format it

Mac!!!!!!

[RWSchlatter]

only a hint: after installing the disk in your system, did you go into CMOS setup and check if the BIOS has recognized the proper size of your disk ? maybe you have to adjust the settings manually.

______________
Regards - Richard

[bskorte]

yes its fine in cmos, thanks! also I have used fdisk same thing, but here is something unusual, when I type fdisk it says invalid media type press r retry a abort f fail, Theonly way to go ahead witht the fdisk is to type f for fail then it will go on,wierd isn't it?

[coolsights2000]

you will need to do a low level format of the disk drive you will need the software from the manf to do that....... if that doesn't work then it is time for a new drive

I have had this problem with a 1.41 floppy when my drive went out... meshed up a few disk


Mac!!!!!

P.S. I hope over kill did not kill it the disk has 1 and zero's on it for sync signals if they get meshed up the disk is bad then try a low level format first

[RWSchlatter]

"...type fdisk it says invalid media ..."
J think this is the important fact ! J found following information in Microsoft documentation, quote:

Invalid media error message when formatting a FAT32 partition.

When you try to format a FAT32 file system partition larger than 8,025 MB from within Windows 98, you may receive the following error message:

Verifying <xxx.xx>M
Invalid media or track 0 bad-disk unusable
Format terminated

where <xxx.xx> is the size of the partition.

This error occurs if there is a non-MS-DOS partition preceding the extended MS-DOS partition and the primary MS-DOS partition has been formatted using the real-mode Format.exe command. To resolve this issue, format the volume using the following steps.

To format the volume

Click Start, click Shut Down, click Restart in MS-DOS mode, and then click OK.
Type the following command
format <drive>:

where <drive> is the drive letter for the partition you want to format.

Press ENTER.
When the partition is formatted, type Exit to restart Windows 98.
You must run CVT1 to convert a drive to FAT32.
When you attempt to convert a drive to the FAT32 file system, you may receive the following error message:

You must run CVT1 to convert a drive to FAT32. In Windows,
click the Start button, point to Accessories, point to
System Tools, and then click the Drive Converter (FAT32) icon.
The conversion was canceled.

This error message can occur if you attempt the conversion when in an MS-DOS window. When the computer is booted to a command prompt, run Cvt.exe by typing the following command:

cvt <drive> /cvt32

where <drive> is the drive to be converted.

--- end quote ---

______________
Regards - Richard