Re: The Magical Ghost Partition

On Wed, 03 Dec 2003 15:22:13 GMT, Polychromic <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:

I tried to remember anything I thought as pertinent, but I guess I
need to add a couple of comments.  I'll just answer everyone here
though.

I don't know what "low level" formatting is.  From the way you guys
were talking, I'm going to assume that's the kind that *really* wipes
the drive vs. sort of wiping it.  I thought you needed utilities to do
that.  It's got an Amibios (I guess that's standard PB) but I wouldn't
know how to do that.  And according to Poly, since it's not SCSI it's
a moot point anyway.

As for the RAID thing Ashi mentioned, I don't know what that is, other
than having heard of it.  I couldn't tell you what anyone else did.
It had been taken to a shop where they did something to check the
(1st) hard drive, cause it wouldn't boot and the lady thought it was
busted.  From what she described to me, I assumed it'd gotten shut
down wrong too many times and files eventually got corrupted.  The
shop even said they only thought Windows need re-installed.  (She
didn't want to pay for that -- that's when I got the phone call.)  I
don't know what that shop did to it.  The 2nd drive did not come with
the computer.  That, and a new CD drive and modem were added later.
She claims the shop ran some diagnostic on it that wiped the 1st
drive.  But I've discovered I can't count on anything she says.

Nothing is showing wrong in device manager with the controllers.

As for any application doing anything, Poly was right that I
reformatted all the partitions and loaded Windows from scratch.  I got
rid of the primary partition on the 2nd drive and made it all an
extended partition.

As for sounding like someone used "subst command to mirror the
existing drive" -- what does that mean?  I get the concept of
"mirror," but I've never heard of a subst command.  And can something
like that be left on the drive with normal formatting?

BTW, I knew what Claus meant by secured mode. :-)   I haven't done
that though.

>>
>>A friend of a friend dumped her old computer on me cause she got a new
>>one and saw no need to have an old extra one lying about.  Personally,
>>I can't understand that, but that's just me. :-)  (Even got the
>>monitor.)
>
>You can fix it up and sell it, if it's not too horribly old.

Sell it?  Well, I could use the money, but if I can get it working OK,
I'd like to use it.  I have plans for it. :-)  I had the scanner
working the other night.  The extra partition doesn't seem to be
causing it problems, but that doesn't mean it won't, something I just
haven't seen yet.

>>
>>I discovered there was a second hard drive on it (a weird 5.25" thing
>>I've never seen?) and it was all partioned up.  So after I installed
>
>Quantum Bigfoot?  Quantum made those in a large format to enhance
>drive cooling but they had some problem - I don't forget exactly what.

It's not a Quantum.  I have a Quantum Lightening on my oldest
computer, 8-9 years old and still working fine.  The bios shows it as
a BMI, but all I can see on the drive itself is "International."  It's
a 3 gig, while the one that came with it is only 1.5 gig.  The 1st
drive's a Maxtor, BTW.

>>
>>Furthermore, it's duplicating everything from the E partition.  I
>>noticed it was the same size, and then when I installed something on E
>>last night, it's also showing up as being on this I.  <Twilight Zone
>>music>  It's showing up in Explorer in alphabetical order.  I went
>>into fdisk for the hell of it, and it's showing as being on the 1st
>>hard drive, right behind C.  And of course, there's not that much
>>space on the 1st drive -- it can't really be there.  I have not
>>actually tried to go to that partition and see if that program will
>>run from there.  (Windows seems to *think* it's there.)
>
>Strange.

I'm glad to hear you say that.  At least I don't feel like I'm going
nuts or something.

>  I guess I would pull all the hardware, then install parts I
>wanted to be in there.  It sounds a bit like a situation I came across
>once where a machine (maybe a pb) had a harddrive made from two drives
>that were physically joined together in a strange hardware striped
>configuration.  I guess that was around 96 or 97.  So maybe removing
>the extra drive and install w95 to the remaining one will work.
>
>Do you have a graphical partitioning tool like Partition Magic?
>Sometimes seeing the partitions visually can explain what is
>happening.

Yep, I've got PM.  I'd be curious what it shows, especially as Windows
is showing it as being the last partition, but fdisk is showing it on
the 1st drive behind C, as though it's a second primary or something.

>
>But still, I would remove the extra drive and start fresh.

Well, there is a slight problem with that.  This case is horrid and
everything is inside a big cage that's hard to deal with, with cables
all squished into this tiny space, and that would all have to be
ripped apart.  Then there's a metal bar across that with a board on it
that has all the card slots, and that would have to come out.  I'd
prefer to avoid it if possible.  The place where a second drive is
supposed to go is easy to get to.  Figures. 

Since no one seems to have a "quick fix" (well, I could hope, couldn't
I?), I think I'll take a peak with Partition Magic first.  I might
just wipe everything out and start over and see if something happens
again.  It just bugs me that *something* made it do this and I don't
know what.


--

Erimess Dragon  
 -==(UDIC)==-          

d++e+NT++Om UK!1!2!3!A!L!                   
U+uCuFuG+++uLB+uA+ nC+nH+nP+nS++nT-xa2
--------
Do infants enjoy infancy as much as 
adults enjoy adultery?
--George Carlin Mumblings