Re: The Magical Ghost Partition

On Wed, 03 Dec 2003 20:39:50 -0500, erimess wrote:

>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?

Yeah, I'm just saying what it sounds like, not what it actually is
since you had formatted it.

I do think that maybe you've got one those dual drives that would only
work using the correct restore disk.  At least that is what the old PB
BOM site said when I investigated a few years ago.  I didn't try to
fdisk and format that machine manually so I don't know what it would
have done.

Still, the first thing I would do is simply everything by taking out
any extra drives and check the cabling and jumpers while you're at it,
then do a clean fdsik/format/install.

>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.

Oh well, the extra magic partition would drive me crazy not knowing
what it was exactly.  

>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.

So what does it show?

>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. 

A messy case?  All the more reason to tear it apart, clean it up and
start fresh.  Do you have a big bag of nylon ties?  I'm using neon
pink ones right now.  My bag of neon yellow ran out.  :)

>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.

Elves.  Not the friendly Christmasty or Tolkieny elves.  But mean
Brothers Grimm elves that like to cause mischief and eat children.

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