disk help

[spacekowboy]

somehow on my 30 gig drive with 98 se, a tiny dos partition was written and the 29 gig used partition became to fdisk, a non dos partition.

interestingly, i can still boot to 98. it stops and says no PT, which i presume is no partition, i hit enter and it boots like normal.

i dont understand what happened. when i try to reload 98 it says it cant as it finds a nondos partiton.

can anyone explain what happened and is there a way to redos the large partition?

i sysed the drive,but it was a 95 disk, and thats another problem, now it says starting win95 and invalid version..and the 98 boot disk doesnt have a sys to re sys the drive....again,help!

thanks everyone.

spacekowboy Spacekowboy

 

[wolluf]

its a bit of a confusing post - i don't understand what's happened at all - 'somehow on my 30 gig drive with 98 se, a tiny dos partition was written' - care to clarify? (have you virus checked?)

PS win98 boot disk DOES include sys command (but using it on a windows installation you need to save & restore msdos.sys or build a new one after you've sys'ed drive - the one from boot disk is minimal - & will cause boot to dos prompt.

 

[zaphod38]

spacekowboy,

It's not clear from your post if you have the MS Win98SE system boot disk or if you have a boot/start-up disk created by a Win98 installation.

If you have an original MS Win98SE system boot disk (or get a copy of one from a web-site dedicated to boot disks - I apologise as I don't know the name or URL) you can use fdisk to cure your partitioning woes (assuming you have used fdisk before), then install 98SE via either the floppy or the CD (if your mobo bios permits CD-booting).

98SE should find your primary partition and will format it, installing the necessary system files, prior to installing 98SE 'proper'.

Regards,

zaphod38

 

[Kento]

Copied from Maxtor for what it's worth:

"Q05: When booting my system, I get a NO PT or a PT ERROR, what causes this?

A05: This error is caused by a corrupt partition table. To resolve this, you must
restore the boot track or recreate partitions. Reference either Maxtor
Document Number 24003 or 24019 to restore the MaxBlast/MaxBlast Plus boot track. Reference either Maxtor Document Number 20004 or 20006 for proper partitioning and formatting procedures."

http://www.maxtor.com/products/DiamondMax/techsupport/Q&A/30008.html#Q5

 

[spacekowboy]

thanks guys but..

it is confusing. i have no idea why it decided to create a tiny dos and make the big drive nondos except for the last post.

yes i know how to fdisk but i was looking for a way to save all the data, in other words make it a dos partition since it still works. ive been reloading w98 for so long its frightening to think i cant do it again!

sigh. Spacekowboy

 

[edfair]

You probably have a system that can't identify a 30gb drive by itself. So the system was created using maxblast, which reallocates sectors into different size clusters to take advantage of all the space.
A maxblast partition is a non-dos partition that looks like a dos partition.
Something went wrong with the maxblast partition.
You could try the links provided by Kento. They may help you get the maxblast back, which might get your 29gb back. Ed Fair
unixstuff@juno.com
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[wolluf]

SpaceKowboy,

You still haven't given any definite information about how it might have happened. Eg, Kento's suggestion (is it a Maxtor drive? And/or did you use a utility to get round bios not recognising full disk size - is it old bios which doesn't recognise larger drives?)

Have you got a copy of Partition Magic? (Might at least give you some info about the 2 partitions)

 

[MiklK]

Ed Fair is one of the people I ALWAYS pay close attention to, frankly ...[but re: where it came from] I can tell you that I got a "magic" partitioon at one point and it drove me NUTS. Turns out a revert-program I'd installed, Go Back, had created an extra partitioon as part of its storage process. There was no indication in the lit I had that it worked that way.
But it does.
(But yours is probably too small to be accounted for that way... Ah, well) Good Luck
(A bird in the hand greatly interferes with typing.)
Mikl

 

[spacekowboy]

its a western digital drive. ive not used partition magic or any such program.

i removed the 30g, put in a 10 gig, also wd, messed with trying to load win2000 server, it wldnt load.

took off the 10g, put back the 30g and voila, it was messed up per first post.

the bios recognized both drives as it should have.

i have zero idea whats going on.

Spacekowboy

 

[edfair]

If you had no partitioning software involved I would probably start thinking along the lines of a virus attack.
There have been instances of programs for tracking surfing creating partitions like this, but they have been at the end of the drive, not at the beginning.
I would probably try partition magic on the drive, but that is because I have it available. And I would try a google search for "partition repair" to see what tools might be available. Also for partition sizes to see if there are any quirks with SE that might have led to this.
Ed Fair
unixstuff@juno.com
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[wolluf]

Try this utility to see what type of partition your non-Dos one is -

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/steve-dunn/PD.zip

I take it win98 (or is it win95 now) boot sector files are on the tiny dos partition (io.sys, msdos.sys, command.com)

You say you can still get into win98 - what drive letters are showing up in there? (eg, is tiny dos C:? does non-Dos appear?).