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Disable first 3 gigabyte of a hard disk?

Forum CPU & Components : Other Components - Disable first 3 gigabyte of a hard disk?

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2Cb   08-25-2006 at 08:34:14 PM

Hi,


Does anyone know of a way to disable the first 3 gigabyte of a HD in order to be able to use it from that 3rd gig and on.

My HD has an unrecoverable error somewhere around the 2nd gig which prevents me from doing anything further than installing the OS. The OS installs fine but once i add anything more, the error part is overwritten and the comp is dead.

Is there ANY way to block the first 3 gigs (windows dosmode recovery tools) ?

Help would be very much appreciated.

Big thx,


2Cb.

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TunaSoda   08-25-2006 at 08:40:01 PM
- 0 +

Try wipeing the drive and create a 3gig partition but don't format it, create another with the remaining space, format it, and install windows

Reply to TunaSoda
CNeufeld   08-25-2006 at 09:25:42 PM
- 0 +

I realize this may not be an option for you, but IMHO, just buy a new drive. If you're having that kind of problems with it now, it's just not worth the headaches and potential data corruption issues.

If nothing else, make sure you back up anything important on this drive on a regular basis.

Clint

Reply to CNeufeld
allhell   08-25-2006 at 09:37:47 PM
- 0 +

I was totally laughed at when I told some one here that you could use fdisk to assist in hd repairs.
The jackass,,, don't remember who right now said fdisk only allows you to partition drives & cant help with drive recovery/repairs.

Well here is some home work for you,,, go here: http://mirror.href.com/thestarman/asm/mbr/switches.htm

& look for this:/ACTOK switch & use you imagination along with dos "scandisk" command & you will not have to give up the first 3GB of your drive.

Reply to allhell
fishboi   08-25-2006 at 09:48:11 PM
- 0 +

Seriously, I would recommend buying a new Seagate 250GB for $70. You wont look back. $70 is nothing compared to the pain of losing data.

Reply to fishboi
joex444   08-25-2006 at 09:53:48 PM
- 0 +

Another vote for a new drive. Once you get an unrecoverable error in the drive, you'll get another. I have 2 Seagate 120GBs that have been fine for 3 years, running RAID0 the whole time. I plan on getting new Seagate SATA drives when I do a rebuild.

Reply to joex444
ivoryjohn   08-25-2006 at 10:01:21 PM
- 0 +

Once upon a time, scandisk full scan would mark these disks. If it still does, it would surely have to do this in DOS mode during a boot. A format should also identify bad sectors and mark them as unusable. (Full format NOT QUICK).

On non-ide drives, you can do a low level format which would mark bad blocks.

Best advice is to spring for a new drive.

Reply to ivoryjohn
zenmaster   08-25-2006 at 10:26:15 PM
- 0 +

You can run Chkdsk to locate and flag bad drive sectors.

See - http://support.microsoft.com/defau [...] -us;315265

However, as many have said, get a new drive.

The ONLY thing I would consider using this drive for is a secondary drive on my system to hold a swap file and temp directory.

This could improve system performance w/o holding any critical data.

Once a drive starts getting bad sectors, things generally start going south fast.

Reply to zenmaster
allhell   08-26-2006 at 01:18:06 AM
- 0 +

Thats good advice but some still cant afford it & if done properly you have nothing to loose ,,, only real down side is the size of that disk,,, it will take a long time if it were to run the procedure to the end.

Reply to allhell
allhell   08-26-2006 at 01:20:46 AM
- 0 +

I have repaired many drives & I can only remember 1 failing within 12 months,,,, my many,,, is only more than 30. The others are running quite fine.

Reply to allhell
2Cb   08-26-2006 at 09:10:00 PM
- 0 +

Ok,

Fixing it with fdisk or anything doesn't work, I tried all that, I know most (not all!) possibilities. Not much to do then turn it in. It wont install windows on the other partiotion coz it always asks for the 3gig partition to format it first and instasll its temp files there.

Its a new disk, so im retourig it in to swap for a new one. Meantime i bought a second new one and it works fine. Once the swap for the broken one arrives ill put it in as a raid.

I got Maxtors though. Should be fine too.

Thx for all feedback.

Reply to 2Cb
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