Major Problem partitioning drives...Help

I go through the process to make a new partition. It lets me choose the size, name, and it assigns a letter. I click proceed I go to 'commit' and get to a screen that gives me a Warning - A reboot is required for completing this operation; the operation will be cancelled if you choose not to reboot now. So, I click’ reboot'. Then the program goes to 'analyze partition, locking partitions, checking partitions - then my computer reboots. Next, a screen comes up 'analyze partitions, assign name, synchronize partitions' and it reboots-AGAIN. When my computer finishes rebooting - there is no partition.

Here's what I have done. I have read quite a few of your FAQ's.
Uninstalled, downloaded the latest version 10.0.2117-s-en.exe and reinstalled.
Downloaded the latest version of Acronis drivers - it tells me I already have the latest versions.

I'm not the brightest bulb in the pack but, nothing seems to work. I hope I did'nt waste 49.99 for nothing !

 

I'm running xp Pro and have the same problem. I split my C: drive in half and now the drive is half the size, but the other half is missing. The new partition shows up with Disk Director (DD), but not in Windows. Tried formatting with DD, but no improvement. The software was purchased last night, so is a fresh new install.

 

If you are trying to use DD in automatic mode it often causes this problem. Switch to manual mode and go from there.


Colin

 

DD was always in manual mode so that was not this problem. I tried resizing the partitions a few times to see if it would correct itself, but no good. Finally went to Disk Management (DM) and found that Windows did see the partition, but there was no drive letter assigned to it. I used DM to assign a drive letter and now it works fine. DD seems to forget to get a drive letter assigned to the new partition.

Thank you,
Paul

 

Curious. I just tried the same operation in manual mode by creating a new NTFS partition in free space, and a drive letter was automatically assigned. In any event, DD has the ability to assign/change drive letters so you could have fixed this with DD also.

 

Antonio:

Don't worry; you haven't ruined the drive. If all else fails you can always use DD10 to wipe (zero) the partition table on the drive and then start over.

You will only need to wipe the first sector on the drive to erase the partition table. For good measure you can wipe the first 64 sectors in case you had something other than Microsoft boot managers installed. Be careful when doing this. Make sure that you are wiping the correct drive. Don't accidentally wipe your main hard disk!

You will, of course, be unable to recover any files off the drive after you do this, but afterwards you will have the equivalent of a new, blank hard drive. You should then be able to create new partitions, format them, etc.

I've done this when in a pickle before and nothing else seemed to work correctly. In fact, if you have the time available you can let DD10 wipe the entire drive, but that might take hours for a 200 GB drive. But that will definitely return it to the condition that it was in when you bought it.

 

Thanks! I'm glad to hear that there is a solution... I only have one problem now... I don't know what dd10 is... sorry for the ignorance

 

Antonio:

DD10 = Acronis Disk Director Suite 10 (the topic of this forum).

 

Hello, Mark,

I have done as you said. I've chosen the option "Clear" on the Drive. I didn't see the option of choosing the wiping of only a limited number of sectors so I've wiped it all... after one hour, when it finished, the drive still only showed half of its real size! only 100GB!! 91GB of NTFS partition and less than 10GB of unallocated space.

PLEASE HELP!!!

sincerely,
Antonio.

 

Antonio:

Then the "Clear" operation did not zero the partition table. That's what you really need to do to reset the drive so that you can create new partitions. Here are a couple of methods to try:

1. Using Disk Director in manual mode, click on the disk to select it (not on one of the partitions; you must select the whole disk)
2. Choose "Edit" to open the Acronis Disk Editor
3. From the "View" menu choose "View as hex"
4. Look at Absolute sector 0 at the beginning of the disk. Do you see any data in here? If so, this is the area that needs to be zeroed.
5. Fill in sector 0 with all zeros. You can do this by going to an empty sector (sector 2 or 3 should be empty) and select all of the bytes from 0000 to 01FF (256 bytes). Then choose "Edit" "Copy".
6. Highlight all of sector 0 bytes from 0000 to 01FF and choose "Edit" "Paste"
7. Verify that all of sector 0 is blank (filled with 00 bytes)
8. Choose "Edit" and then "Save Sector"

Your partition table should now be blank. Go on from here to create new partitions as you want them.

An alternate method is to use DOS and the fdisk command to remove all partitions from the drive and then create a new primary partition. This operation should re-write the partition table, but you need to be able to run DOS to do it this way.

A third alternative is to grab a Windows installation CD and start up into the installer. When you get to the partitioning step, remove all of the existing partitions on the drive and create one new primary partition and format it. After that, bail out and reboot the PC and you should have a drive with one large NTFS partition on it.

 

hello Mark,

I have looked at sector 0 but it was already completely blank!

I have noticed that if i chose the option of updating something called MBR and look again into the sectors I see that Sector zero (and only sector zero) is not composed by zeros any more and this is part of what I see on the translation of the exadecimal code on the right: "... Invalid partition table. Error loading operating system. Missing operating system..."

Oh, man... I think I really messed things up!

then I edit it so that they're all zeros again and go to see if I get 200GB... but no... it still is 100Gb...

What shall I do??

 

Antonio:

What you are seeing in sector 0 is the Master Boot Record (MBR) code. The error messages are supposed to be in there exactly as you are describing them. Those are the error messages that your PC will produce if there are problems booting the PC. That's where they come from.

At this point I can't understand why you don't see the full size of the drive unless it is a BIOS issue with your PC. Can you connect the drive to a different PC and see what it looks like?

 

Finally I have understood what the problem is about... even though I still don't have a solution... ;(

It's about the number of sectors!

The Sticker on the drive says:
200.04GB (LBA 390,721,968 Sectors)

but every partition software that I have used so far always detects only 192,426,569 Sectors!

Buy turning off the Notebook during the partition operation I have somehow corrupted a basic file where the number of sectors (of 512Kb each) is defined!

Anybody knows any software that can "reset" the number of sectors of the Drive to the original Number? so that they can be detected again and I will be able to partition the total 200GB?

(desperate) Antonio.

 

Antonio:

I don't understand that one either, Antonio. In days of old, you used to need special software to make a PC BIOS understand Logical Block Addressing (LBA), but most modern BIOSes and operating systems do now. By any chance is this an older PC?

Does the drive manufacturer (Toshiba) have any diagnostics or test software on their web site? You could try their utilities to see what they report; perhaps even contacting them for help.

 

the laptop is a New Dell Inspiron 9400 bought last year.

I have tried to contact Toshiba... no answer yet...

i'm getting so depressed with this... ;(

 

Antonio:

I think that the problem is your Dell PC Bios. Look at post #6 in this article:
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=165269 I know that you have an Inspiron 9400; not a 9300, but perhaps it's the same issue.

and look at this review, the last few sentences in the first review by sokoloff:
http://www.pricegrabber.com/rating_getprodrev.php/product_id=15838214/id_type=M

You should check Dell's site to see if there is a newer version of your PC's BIOS available, or contact their tech support to see if there is a fix available.