HDD Physical Error

[erkanea 0]

I have a Seagate 40 gb baracuda hdd. i had Win2k and i tried to install Red Hat Linux. I couldn't adjusted swap partition which improves the speed of Linux. Also linux can run without swap partition. Except swap part everything was ok and linux run ok. but boot selcetion was not ok and i couldn't boot my pc from win2k. i tried reinstalling linux and the setup program detected swap part didn't installed and said me it can do the necessary changes and i agreed with it. Everything started with this. linux setup was completed correctly and linux run without any error. but win2k again couldn't booting. i tried to use partition magic and it said drive geometry is bad and couldn't access and make any changes to my hdd. i tried to use Extfs2 and converted all partitions to FAT32. after that i performed a fdisk operation, deleted all partitions, and created new partition, installed fresh win2k. now partition magic still gives error message that hdd's dirve geometry is bad. win2k runs correctly but i think a bit slower. how can i correct this problem? i need to use partition magic and i don't want to lose data. ;(

[Rhadoo 0]

I don't think you can solve your problem without losing the data on your HDD. Try to backup it onto another HDD and then try a low-level format on the first one.

Anyway, you can run w2k even if PM gives you errors, and when you want to install another OS make a low level format, then make partitions on it in Linux.

[unix_based_punk 0]

First of all, I would use either LILO or NT's boot manager if you're not already. Secondly, make sure your BIOS setting for the hard drive is set to LBA, not CHS.

 

It's possible that a partition has truncated a cylinder or your MBR has been corrupted from a bad partitioning job.

 

You didn't by any chance have the drive on an offboard or embedded Ultra ATA controller did you? If it was on the motherboard's IDE controllers, the BIOS readings would be different in terms of the drive's size compared to the BIOS readings of an offboard or embedded Ultra ATA controller.

 

If your BIOS supports LBA32, you can install Linux beyond 1024 cylinders. If not, you can do a custom partiton job with linux fdisk or PM.

 

I would go with what Rhadoo said and do a low-level IDE format of the drive and start over.

[erkanea 0]

thanks all. i have solved the problem with a fdisk operation. i didn't understand but it was solved. i tried it before but the result wasn't good.