Unable to write to disk 1 sector 0

Win XP, 160 G drive. Want to partition it to enable dual boot. When trying to partition, get "Unable to write to disk 1 sector0". Pressing "Ignore" seems to complete the partition, but when looking for it the partition was not made. Also get same error when activating Acronis OS. Am using DD10.0, build 2160.

 

By any chance are you using Norton GoBack or other utilities that prevent writing to the Master Boot Record (MBR)? Or, is there a security setting in your PC's BIOS that prevents changes to the MBR?

 

Tried it with all start-up items disabled, including antivirus-same result. Also, I see no security info at all in the BIOS screens. Maybe it requires total reinstall & partitioning during OS installation--in which case Disk Director is useless.

 

Woden:

Have you tried the procedures from the rescue cd? If not, then do it that way and see if it works. If you're trying it from Windows, your anti-virus program my be blocking boot-sector access. Even though you disabled it sometimes they don't "completly" disable.

Assuming that the hard drive is good (and it is boot correctly into Windows, right?) then there is probably a BIOS setting that is blocking boot-sector access. The setting is probably not in the Security section and it may not be labeled clearly. Look under the Advanced section for anything the says Virus or Boot Sector or HD Write Protection.

If you post your computer specifications, maybe someone can find out or has a system based on the same board.

Computer Brand & Model #
Motherboard Brand & Model #

 

There is nothing that speaks of any virus, HD protection, boot sector manipulation, etc. anywhere in the BIOS Screens. Computer boots normally.
Computer is Gateway 510 with Motherboard by Intel: D865GLC AAC27501-408. BIOS: Intel BF86510A.15A.0057.P10.0401231902 01/23/2004.
Tried an OS reinstall, asking computer to resize the partition---it did that, basically splitting the 160 G in two, OS loaded into 1st partition. However, partition won't create in the free space left over--goes back to the "unable to write----" error message.

 

Woden:

Did you try running the Rescue Disk version of Disk Director? That will often work when you can't get the Windows version to modify its own partition.

 

Many thanks to Mudcrab & KOlo for your help. When you say use the rescue disk, do you mean boot from that? Should I make the disk made to boot to Disk Director? I guess I don't quite understand what difference this would make. However, what I am trying to do is get to the dual boot opportunity without losing everything I've already got on the XP side. Tx again.

 

Yes, you are correct. You boot your PC with the Rescue Disk version of Acronis Disk Director. Then you are running in a standalone environment that is independent of Windows. Usually this will allow you to make changes to your Windows partition.

When you boot from the rescue disk you will have an opportunity to start up into the "full" version or the "safe" version of Disk Director. Try the full version first, and if it doesn't work try the safe version. In Disk Director lingo, "full" version is a Linux-based environment with support for USB disks, and "safe" version is a DOS-based environment that does not support USB but will support any disk seen by your PC's BIOS. Both versions look very much like the Windows version, so you shouldn't have any trouble finding your way around the program.

 

Finally able to resolve my problem. Dawned on me that I had Roxio GoBack installed on the main drive--in effect producing an unsupported "ghost" drive. Uninstalled same, & the rest of the project went as expected.
Thanks a lot for all your help--the rescue disk dialog pointed in the right direction.

W.

 

"Failed to read from the sector 0 of the hard disk 3"

Folks,

I noticed a thread on Wilders' Security Forums via a Google search which was highly relevant to a problem I've been trying to resolve since installing Acronis True Image (from within Disk Director version 10) on my Music DAW:

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/archive/index.php/t-43086.html

so I decided to subscribe and ask this:-

Background
I have 2 WD 10,000 RPM Raptor SATA drives, each with a legitimate copy of Windows XP Pro SP2 2002 installed. I also have a SATA-connected disk 3 and a PATA-connected disk 4 for archiving and back-up. These connect to an ASUS P4C800-e Deluxe MoBo with 4GB memory and various music DAW DSP and I/F cards.

Each of the Raptors has an identical version of Windows XP Pro on it - created by Acronis True Image - which are then 'tailored' to provide a Music DAW (with its own specific hardware drivers) and a 'work' PC (based on MS Office products). The former has no network and/or AV / SPAM / Firewall tools actively running on it, whilst the latter is fully-protected and sits behind an Ethernet-connected hardware firewall and DMZ. All drives are NTFS, some have default cluster sizes (4KB ?), the ones for music have 16 or 32KB.

Problems & Symptoms
If I boot up this PC with the power and SATA cables to disk 3 connected, it takes AGES to reach the Acronis OS Selector page, displaying this message first:

"Failed to read from the sector 0 of the hard disk 3".

If either cable is removed from disk 3 (i.e. it is unavailable), the machine boots normally into OS Selector and thence Windows in less than a minute. Perfect!

However, with disk 3 connected, only choosing "Ignore All" from the Acronis OS Selector 'error message' results in the actual Acronis OS Selector page being displayed - and this takes ages to reach - pressing either <Esc> or <F6> has no effect whatsoever.

All-in-all boot time takes around 10 minutes from start to finish when disk 3 is fully-connected because of the delays caused by having OS Selector go through the motions of trying to 'read' from sector 0 of disk 3. (I'm not even sure WHY it tries to read from this sector as I can find no other explicit reference to hard disk 3 anywhere in Acronis OS Selector's user set-up or config!!! And I've certainly not asked it to at any point during initial config nor was Windows - or, indeed, ANY O/S - installed to it!)

Once the OS Selector page is reached, the 2 Windows XP Pro image options are correctly displayed and all the supporting info / parameters appear to be ideal too. There is no mention of disk 3 here at all.

Solutions Attempted
If I run OS Selector from within Disk Director, once I've logged in to Windows, and try to 'find' another OS present on any other drive connected to this system - using whatever tools Acronis' OS Selector provides - it finds nothing, as I would expect: this drive has NEVER had an OS on it - it was a brand-new drive installed when this system was built not so long ago!

Interestingly, if I remove (and later re-install the Acronis tools) Windows Boot Manager does not seem to be 'aware' of any OS being present on disk 3 either, only Acronis 'looks' for something!

I have reformatted this drive (using Acronis Disk Director and from within Windows on this system and another!), wiped it, copied data back onto it and off again ... in short, I've done everything I can to erase this dodgy partition image. The drive is error free (full CHKDSK) and works well in another system (without any Acronis products installed) if I copy data onto it.

At the moment, I am not using the drive - it remains disconnected - so that my DAW will actually boot up before the night is over and the music-making urges gone(!); however, at some point, I will need to access it in order to archive my music files. I really am fed up wasting hours of my life waiting for this music PC to boot up and trying to cure this problem!

Help Required
Any ideas at all?

 

Hello Stephen:

It sounds to me like the Linux-based hardware detection in OS Selector is having trouble communicating with your third SATA drive or its controller. The current version of OS Selector probably does not include a version of the SATA drivers that support your hardware, although it does appear to deal with your first two SATA drives correctly (different SATA controller for disk 3 maybe?)

I think that you should contact Acronis by filing a trouble report on their web site. Often they can resolve this by sending you updated drivers.

An alternative is to uninstall OSS and use a different boot manager. GRUB will do exactly what you want but you'll have to be a little geeky to figure its syntax out. However, you've figured out how to build a DAW so you should have no trouble. There are also other commercial products out there but it's probably not fair to mention them in an Acronis support forum.

 

Mark,

Thank you - that sounds entirely feasible!

There is a separate Promise driver - which is not included as standard with Windows XP and which has to be manually installed when installing Windows or updating the hard-drive connectivity - (and, by association, which may not be 'recognised' by Acronis' tools at boot time) that enables the non-RAID element of a dual-function Promise SATA controller (which physically resides on an ASUS P4C800-e Deluxe MoBo) to recognise the manner in which the hard-drive is connected to the MoBo.

Given that the BIOS recognises the SATA hard-drive connected to this IDE-enabled on-board (non-RAID) RAID controller at boot time, albeit after rapidly recognising the directly-connected PATA- and SATA-connected drives first (as well as displaying sufficient info about it in the BIOS config pages to convince me it has correctly identified it), why would the Acronis driver 'take issue' with it once the boot procedure has completed?

Regardless, thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

 

Stephen:

I'm not sure of the exact reason, but I suspect that OS Selector is using Linux drivers at run time. In their other products (TrueImage Home and Disk Director), Acronis provides two bootable run-time versions of each program -- a "safe" mode and a "full" mode. The full-mode version uses Linux drivers to address the hardware and can recognize connected USB hardware. The safe-mode version uses a variant of DOS and can only recognize devices that the BIOS maps at boot time.

One way to test this theory is to create a bootable CD with both safe and full versions of Disk Director and use it to boot your PC. I'm betting that the safe-mode version will see all of your disks while the full-mode version will not see your SATA drive.

However, I am unaware of any "safe" mode version of OS Selector, so you're out of luck until Acronis releases updated drivers that will work with your hardware. If you contact them for support they'll ask you to run a report on your system and from this info they *may* be able to provide you updated drivers. It's worth a try.

Or learn "grubspeak". GRUB will do anything that you may want to do for booting different operating systems but it has a somewhat steep learning curve.

 

k0lo,

I'm not sure that OSS does use Linux drivers. I suspect it uses BIOS access for the drives. The reason I think this is because it worked on my ASUS P5B Deluxe/WiFi (P965 chipset) board with RAID. DD 10 & TI 9 (at the time) would not see any SATA drives.