To partition hard disk - the easiest and "cleanest" way ??

Discussion in 'backup, imaging & disk mgmt' started by stalker, Jul 21, 2004.

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  1. stalker

    stalker Registered Member

    Joined:
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    Location:
    Ljubljana, Slovenia
    Hey all ...



    1. I have currently 4 partitions on my Maxtor 2F040J0, Fireball 3, Ultra ATA/133 (DSP) hard disk. The disk is partitioned like that (I got "system" and "boot" titles from "Disk Management part" of "Microsoft Management Console"):

    C:\ "contains" Windows98SE OS (and MS-DOS), and Linux and is primary drive, and labeled as "system partition"
    D:\ "contains" WindowsXP OS, and Cygwin, it is first logical drive of extended partition, and labeled as "boot partition"
    E:\ "contains" mostly mp3's (no OSs)
    F:\ "contains" various stuff, mp3's, documents (no OSs)


    And I have two so-called "hardware" bad-clusters on my D:\ partition. Well, I just assume they are "hardware", cause I had also one bad cluster from last Windows installation on E:\ partition too, but after formating volume, there is no more bad cluster anymore, so I suppose this one on E:\ partition was "software bad-cluster", and the one on D:\ partition is "hardware bad-cluster".

    And I also thought they are "hardware", because they two bad clusters on D:\) were not "solved" by usual Windows in-built cmd-line function FORMAT [volume], though on the other hand Powermax's diagnostic test (utility for all ATA disks from Maxtor ...) didn't return any error codes, and maybe also to mention after formatting D:\ partition, and running "surface scan" on Windows98/SE only marked those two clusters as "Partially Damaged".

    Sscandisk logs for D:\ partition are (it is 4 GB in size):

    8192 bytes in bad sectors.
    4096 bytes in each allocation unit.





    2. So, I am planning to "low-level format" the disk with that Powermax utility from Maxtor home page as suggested, but since there is no way to "low-level format" only one partition at the time (but only whole hard disk), I will surely need to repartition the hard disk again.

    And because my friend did this the first (and only) time, and as I remeber he did it with Partition Magic 8, and I use the partitions since then with no changes to partition's structure made, and yeah, I am a bit confused, how to do it right this time ...


    - How is it possible to do it in "clean way", if Windows needs to be installed for Partition Magic to be able to do its job at all ??

    - I imagine, in this way, one would partition hard disk, which already contains files, folders, and whole OS ??

    - Is there any way to partition it from DOS, before installing Windows (i.e. when there are no OSs installed yet) ??

    - Is there any other command-line program to do the job ??

    - Maybe FDISK on Windows98/SE (the file resides in C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\ ...), but again, this would require Windows to be installed previously partitioning) ??



    P.S., I am not in hurry with this at all, but I would really like to know all options that are possible, especally the "cleanest", easyest, and fastest ...



    Thanks for any help !!
     
  2. Close_Hauled

    Close_Hauled Registered Member

    Joined:
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    Location:
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    I am assuming that you plan on re-installing Windows XP. Go ahead and low level format the drive. Sounds like you should if bad sectors have been detected. Then use the Windows install CD to create the partitions that you want. Assuming that the partitions will all be either FAT32 or NTFS. If not, leave a blank partition for whatever else you plan.

    Personally, it sounds like you should have two drives in your system. One for the OS, the other for data. If you have the resources to do this, then that is what I would do.

    My system is set up this way. I have a small, very fast drive with the OS. Then I have a bigger drive for all of my applications and data. None of my drives are partitioned.

    Close Hauled
     
  3. Azn_Tweaker

    Azn_Tweaker Registered Member

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    Location:
    Canada, Toronto
  4. stalker

    stalker Registered Member

    Joined:
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    Posts:
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    Location:
    Ljubljana, Slovenia
    Thanks, both !!



    cheers
     
  5. Azn_Tweaker

    Azn_Tweaker Registered Member

    Joined:
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    Posts:
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    Location:
    Canada, Toronto
    Your Welcome :)
     
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