How Can I restore the Geometry of a disk?

Hi,
I have two 100GB Seagate Laptop drives, (7200 and 4200). Somehow
the Geometry of the 4200 rpm drive was changed from
C/H/S = 12161/255/63 to
C/H/S = 193821/16/63

This means if the internal (7200 rpm) drive fails that I cannot
plug in the other drive ( I get a disk read error immediately
after starting a windows boot).

I have "cloned" the proper(internal) drive to the external drive
several times but the geometry remains the same...

Is there any software that will let me regain the original
geometry of the buggered drive. ( I can boot linux from
the slower drive...)

Thanks,

Jerry

 

Hello Jerry,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Server Disk Backup Software.

Could you please boot into Windows with both hard drives connected and create Acronis Report as it is described in Acronis Help Post?

Please also do the following:

- Launch Acronis Report Utility once again and select the "Create Bootable Floppy" option;
- Insert a blank floppy disk in the A: drive and proceed with creation of the bootable floppy;
- Turn off the computer, unplug the "proper" hard drive and install the one having the issue in it's place;
- Boot the computer from this diskette and wait for report creation process to finish;
- Collect the report file from the floppy;
- Swap the drives back, boot into Windows and rename the report created from under Windows to report_win.txt and report created using the bootabale floppy to report_diskette.txt.

Please also provide us with the following information:

- Boot your PC from Bootable Rescue CD created using the latest build (2337) of Acronis True Image, and clone the "proper" hard drive to the one having the issue changing the size of partitions a little and see if the problem still persists. Let is know the result;

- Tell us whether your laptop's BIOS recognizes the hard drive having the issue normally;

- Provide us with the exact text of the error message you receive when trying to boot from the hard drive having the issue;

- When exactly the hard drive's geometry has changed?

- How exactly did you find out that the hard drive's geometry has changed?

Please submit a request for technical support. Attach all the collected files and information to your request along with the step-by-step description of the actions taken before the problem appears and the link to this thread. We will investigate the problem and try to provide you with the solution.

Thank you.
--
Alexey Popov

 

I guess I fixed it...

I downloaded Seagate Disc Wizard and reformated the usb drive and
put only one NTFS partition on the rascal.

Partition Magic still declared the disk defective due to geometry
problems....

I decided the reclone the internal drive to the usb drive via the
ATI standalone CD.

I picked the "As Is" option and started the clone process.

I then unplugged another usb drive I had attached to the laptop.
I noticed that the disk activity lights quit!

I cancelled the operation and restarted the clone process.
I noticed during the setup that the usb drive no longer had
any partitions ( I guess step one completed ).

When I got up this morning and examined the usb drive I
found that the original geometry had been restored!

Note that I had recloned the internal drive to the usb drive
earlier and the "bad" geometry on the usb drive "presisted"
through the cloning operation.

I don't know if the Seagate reformating did the trick or the
accidental halting and resuming or the clone was the solution
(or the combination...)

Jerry