Partition Magic - Bad Drive?

Mainframeguy

Debiant by way of Ubuntu
Joined
29 Aug 2002
Messages
3,763
See the attachment for the error I am getting thrown at me by PM when I open it, this error message window pops up - drive is marked as BAD in yellow and I can do nothing with it other than format (which, true to error message, achieves nothing, leaving it in just the same state).

Now I have looked at properties for another drive, to me looks like same architecture - Head and sector count/sizes matching. I have tried formatting from Admin tools - this seems ineffective also (not even sure if it runs a format, goes too fast).

So - what am I to do?

Drive is a BRAND NEW Samsung Spinpoint 80N 160GB ATA drive and at first format/XP install was all fine. Now it is definitely sick - using DriveImage to back it up ran very slow and HDtach confirms speeds down around 1-3 MB/S which is about 5% of what should be regular performance :eek: I looked at the Samsung site - but they seem to have no useful support tools. I have a MAxtor boot disc for PowerTools - but am reluctant to use that for low level format - anyone any comments on that or ANY ideas on how to resolve this issue? :confused:
 

Attachments

  • PMerror1.jpg
    PMerror1.jpg
    17.5 KB · Views: 174
Electronic Punk said:
Do Samsung release any diagnostic tools?

I believe not...

Emeritus - thanks for link (and yeah that was my model drive) but I went through that and the one download you get to is the one to enable recognition of HDs above 120GB (I think) which is already there with XP SP1 or 2 (I forget which)....

Thanks to you both - but guess what? I fixed it - went into admin tools - deleted logical drive - then into PM - brought up a couple of warning dialog to fix flags in partition table - let it do that - then cameup with unused space which I was able to partition and restore to.

I believe drive is useable now - there remains one problem - speeds is still an unbelievably slow 3.3 MB/s :eek: - So until I can fix that it is strictly for slow bulky storage :(
 
Can you tell us how the mobo is seeing the drive?
H
C
S


And what mode windows is using to access the drive?

Start->Control Panel->Performance and Maint.->System->Hardware->Device Manager->IDE (primary or secondary)->Advanced Settings->Current transfer mode

Be sure that the box directly above has "DMA if available" selected. If it does and the drive is using PIO mode "X" that windows has slowed access to the drive to try and prevent CRC errors. It will force a drop every 2 errors I believe, and you must reset it in the registry.

Ultra DMA mode 6->0
PIO mode 4->0
 
Steevo said:
Can you tell us how the mobo is seeing the drive?
H
C
S

did you mean Master Cableselect Slave? If so it is jumpered as Master on the IDE0 bus - I use SATA for my C: drive and the spinpoint is my D: drive

Steevo said:
And what mode windows is using to access the drive?

Start->Control Panel->Performance and Maint.->System->Hardware->Device Manager->IDE (primary or secondary)->Advanced Settings->Current transfer mode

I have attached screenie of the window - it is allowing BIOS select at moment and that seems to set it up as DMA2 :eek: I am guessing you would recommend disabling BIOS selection and selecting UDMA5? I'll try that in a bit (not changing now because a backup is running of all my drives to my external Maxtor).
 
H Heads
C Cylnders
S Sectors


Using this basic drive ge im a tree we can determine if the board is identifiying the size of the drive correctly.
 
aha - silly me - see attached for info you want I think....

(but also notice my problemo is n ow only speed and not G Omm E try ;) :p
 

Attachments

  • CaptureHDinfo.jpg
    CaptureHDinfo.jpg
    188.8 KB · Views: 680
Mainframeguy said:
... disabling BIOS selection and selecting UDMA5? I'll try that ...

having just done this the good news is HDtacb now reports 96.1 MB/s as my average transfer speed :)

The bad news is that during the reboot there was some Device Driver type error that caused machine to hang without rebooting - I hit reset - on reboot drive is good for UDMA5 but the intermittent problem of my "disappearing" DVD R/W has struck again, and I am minus an optical drive!

There's another thread for that though - rep-age for you Steevo on this one, you lead me down the right road after I made the drive "good" again....

[EDIT] here is the thread for the disappearing DVD! [/EDIT]
 
Mainframeguy said:
I have a MAxtor boot disc for PowerTools - but am reluctant to use that for low level format - anyone any comments on that or ANY ideas on how to resolve this issue? :confused:
I have used Max Blast 3 to zero fill drives (either quick or full) other then a Maxtor.
 
just a thought...

have you tried switching to that drive in dos and then typing "chkdsk /f"?
 
I was not clear enough - sorry me bad - this problem is completely fixed - drive is good and no longer at DMA2 but back to UDMA5 speeds (Ca. 100 MB/s) so AOK

But thanks for the thought also.
 
I've seen Parition Magic show "BAD" and outline a disk in yellow before. The disk still functioned properly (though not as quickly as the spec said it would), but partition magic didn't like something about it.

I tried low-level formats that ran for days, high-level formats, repartitioning, etc. Nothing would work. Finally, I used ultimate boot disk to run some utils on it...and as I was removing my master disk and putting this disk as the master on the machine, I was forced to modify my jumpers from slave to master.

Here's the thing, my drive has a sticker on the back for jumper setting for different drives. If your drive has 15 heads use this setting, 16 heads - use this other setting.

I had it on the wrong setting. I jumpered it properly and voila...partition magic was happy.
 
Welcome pdxgibby. :) Well how easy was that.

I can't believe that all] the pics are still there. Ya for attachments. :D
 
i've had PM tell me one of my 250ies was bad. gave me a heart attack. i went out and got a second 250, backed up my original 250. i used windows xp pro to format the 'bad' drive. right after the format, before i even did anything with it, PM said it was bad. so i used maxtors software. everything maxtor had said it was good. formatted it with maxtors software. PM still said bad. formatted it with PM, still said it was bad. that was over a year ago, i dont use PM anymore and the drive is 100%.
 

Members online

No members online now.

Latest profile posts

Also Hi EP and people. I found this place again while looking through a oooollllllldddd backup. I have filled over 10TB and was looking at my collection of antiques. Any bids on the 500Mhz Win 95 fix?
Any of the SP crew still out there?
Xie wrote on Electronic Punk's profile.
Impressed you have kept this alive this long EP! So many sites have come and gone. :(

Just did some crude math and I apparently joined almost 18yrs ago, how is that possible???
hello peeps... is been some time since i last came here.
Electronic Punk wrote on Sazar's profile.
Rest in peace my friend, been trying to find you and finally did in the worst way imaginable.

Forum statistics

Threads
62,015
Messages
673,494
Members
5,621
Latest member
naeemsafi
Back