bad slave drive

[mgillard]

I deleted a linux partition on my HD and was unable to boot back into the windows partition afterwards.

I changed this disk to slave and installed a new master but still cannot access the old drive. The Bios recognizes the drive but it doesn't appear to be accessable to any thing else such as fdisk.

Is there something I'm missing! Can I still save the files in the windows partition?

Thanks in advance,
m

 

[Guest]

Did you have a boot manager installed? Such as Lilo. If so you'll have to remove it.

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Your arrogance is boring!

 

[mgillard]

yes...lilo was installed. But i'm booting with a new windows installation on a brand new disk. The old drive is the slave now.

I think the MBR on the problem disk was damaged or erased when I deleted the linux partition.

 

[Guest]

<A HREF="http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315224" target="_new">How to Remove the Linux LILO Boot Manager</A>

<A HREF="http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;247804" target="_new">How to Remove Linux and Install Windows on Your Computer</A>

Also, IIRC, you can boot from the linux cd, hit F1, then type rescue. There will be an option to remove the boot loader. This may be different with your version of linux (I use Mandrake), but I think you get the idea. After that you will have to reformat the partition that linux was on.

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Your arrogance is boring!

 

[mgillard]

Yeah, I tried using the linux disk but it was unable to recover the partition.

I think the boot sector on the drive is erased. Is there a way to rewrite this sector??

 

[Guest]

Dumb question here. After you deleted the linux partition, did you create a new partion? :tongue:

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Your arrogance is boring!

 

[mgillard]

No!

I'm guessing that was important!

 

[Guest]

HeHe! Yes.
You can't format a partition that doesn't exist.

_________________________
Your arrogance is boring!

 

[mgillard]

Hmmm... But all those sectors are still sitting there, you mean they can no longer be used.

What about the Windows partition, I didn't touch that one, can I not access it!