bqsy1@vax5.cit.cornell.edu (Andrew R. Orndorff, Cornell University) (04/04/91)
Perhaps someone can help me out here:
I recently had to move my hard disk temporarily to make some fixes
to the motherboard. I must have done something to it because DOS can no
longer recognize the primary partition as bottable, though the FAT seems to
be okay.
Before I go any further, let me describe this disk - I used a WD
MFM controller to format the drive dynamically into two separate drives,
one of 10 Mb and the other of 58 Mb. I then used FDISK to create a 3 Mb
primary partition on the first disk with a 7 Mb extended partition. The
second disk also has a 3 Mb primary partition and the rest as an extended
partition with 4 logical drives defined.
So, to continue - I backed up the first disk as much as possible,
and then tried reformating using FORMAT, but that failed after formatting
only two tracks. Then I tried using FDISK to delete the partitions on the
first disk - that worked - and recreated the partiotns, and then rebooted
and attempted to format the first disk again - that still failed.
Anyways, I'm guessing that I need to low-level format at least the
first disk. What I'm hoping is that I won't have to reformat the entire
physical disk. So, does anyone know if it is possible to just low level
format the first 'disk', or will I have to redo the entire disk. Time
constraints are such that I want to take the shortest possible route that I
can.
Thanks in advance for any help.
--
Andrew Orndorff
CIT, Research & Analysis
Cornell University
Internet: bqsy1@vax5.cit.cornell.edu
Bitnet: bqsy1@crnlvax5roth@pdntg1.paradyne.com (Mike Rothman) (04/06/91)
When you low level format a hard-drive, you are wiping out what DEFINES what the drive may be split up into. In other words, if your first PHYSICAL drive has Drive C: and Drive E: on it (NOTE: If you have a second PHYSICAL drive, its primary partition becomes D:) That means you used FDISK or somesuch program to partition it into two pieces. That being the case, a low level format will go below that and wipe that partition out as well as the rest of the physical disk. AKA no formatting of a single logical drive on a physical drive.
bqsy1@vax5.cit.cornell.edu (Andrew R. Orndorff, Cornell University) (04/06/91)
In article <1991Apr5.180841.4491@pdn.paradyne.com>, roth@pdntg1.paradyne.com (Mike Rothman) writes: > When you low level format a hard-drive, you are wiping out what DEFINES > what the drive may be split up into. > > In other words, if your first PHYSICAL drive has Drive C: and Drive E: on it > (NOTE: If you have a second PHYSICAL drive, its primary partition becomes D: > That means you used FDISK or somesuch program to partition it into two pieces > That being the case, a low level format will go below that and wipe that > partition out as well as the rest of the physical disk. > > AKA no formatting of a single logical drive on a physical drive. Well, that's the way that I though it worked. After making a backup of the remaining data and software on my disk, I went ahead and low level formatted the entire disk - took 4 hours to restore everything correctly, primarily because I reinstalled a lot of the software from scratch to save on backing those items; I also changed the partition organization to make better use of the disk. Thanks for your help. -- Andrew Orndorff CIT, Research & Analysis Cornell University Internet: bqsy1@vax5.cit.cornell.edu Bitnet: bqsy1@crnlvax5 **Looking for holographic data storage to come into its own - no more DRAMS or SIMMS, and literally terabytes of disk space - the best part being that there are no drive heads to crash the disk, and when you turn the power off, everything stays where it belongs.***
hollen@megatek.UUCP (Dion Hollenbeck) (04/08/91)
In article <1991Apr5.180841.4491@pdn.paradyne.com> roth@pdntg1.paradyne.com (Mike Rothman) writes: > > When you low level format a hard-drive, you are wiping out what DEFINES > what the drive may be split up into. > That means you used FDISK or somesuch program to partition it into two pieces > That being the case, a low level format will go below that and wipe that > partition out as well as the rest of the physical disk. > > AKA no formatting of a single logical drive on a physical drive. Not necessarily true. Take for instance SPINRITE by Gibson Research. It will lowlevel format a drive, even changing the interleave in the process while the data is in place. This is done one partition at a time. As long as there is no need to re-partition the drive, and you are merely re-formatting to ensure data integrity and sector address marking full strength, you can use Spinrite. If there are any bad sectors which appear during the extremely thorough pattern testing, then it marks that area bad and moves the data elsewhere. If sectors marked bad can be returned to use after thorough testing, they are. If however, you need to re-partition, then you must backup, re-partition and then restore. Sorry I saw the follow up too late which stated that the original poster had already done this, but since the partitions were re-arranged, then it was not work for nothing. I am not affiliated with Gibson Research in any way other than as a very satisfied customer. -- ----- Dion Hollenbeck (619) 455-5590 x2814 Megatek Corporation, 9645 Scranton Road, San Diego, CA 92121 uunet!megatek!hollen or hollen@megatek.uucp