Losing HD after fdisk

[crj]

I have 3 older 5 gig hard drives and hooked them up 1 at a time to check them. computer picked them all up no problem. i fdisk the first one and repartitioned it. when i rebooted the computer it came up no hard drive. i rebooted using 98 startup disk and went to fdisk and it said no hard drive. i then typed in fdisk status and got a error "parameter format not correct". i checked in the bios and the HD is there. but it doesn't show up under my computer. i thought maybe the hd just went bad so i put the other hd in and fdisk it and the same thing happened with the same error. i would guess that something happened to my fdisk and is messing the hard drives up. So any ideas how to correct these HD. i tried booting from my win xp, and it loads drivers, but when you go to format or partition it says no hard drive

 

[jmatt]

Just a little reading needed , I think .

http://www.everythingcomputers.com/reformat_print.htm

http://www.windowsreinstall.com/operating/indexwin98.htm

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q255/8/67.ASP#5

http://www.hexff.com/win98_install.html

http://members.tripod.com/ramblingsoftheoran/tutorials/format-partition.htm

http://www.bootdisk.com/

http://www.bootdisk.com/txtfiles/hdd.txt

 

[crj]

Thanks for the reading. this is a brain teaser, i've done this 50 times before with no problem. glad these were old ones and not my new 80gig hd. i'm just half afraid to put my new one in now, it would be a shame to lose it. guess i'll keep searching, there gotta be a way back with these hard drives somewhere.manufactures couldn't help

 

[jmatt]

You may have to use both of these .

http://www.lurkhere.com/~nicefiles/index.html

Freeware .
WIPE OUT : as the name implies, this utility will absolutely WIPE your hard drive. For those times when an industrial strength cleaner is needed to remove any pesky files Fdisk may have left behind. A readme file is included in the zip file. WARNING...WIPE OUT will remove ALL data
from the Hard Drive.

DIRECTIONS

1- Unzip file
2- Copy WIPEOUT to a Win9x boot disk
3- Boot with Win9x disk
4- At the A:\> type "wipeout c: /nq /np" (no quotes)
/nq = no queries - you will not be asked if you are sure.
/np = no partitions - this will overwrite the MBR

Press Enter .

Now run fdisk to set up partitions .
When done reboot & format .

-------------------------------------------

Delpart.exe From NT 3.51, this utility can delete extended NTFS, Lilo, and just about any other type of partition .
DELPART is a DOS based utility that will remove NTFS partitions from hard drives. FDISK is unable to remove some types of NTFS partitions.
DELPART can wipe clean a hard drive, then you can use FDISK to create partitions normally.

http://www.bootdisk.com

http://www.michalferber.com/downloads.asp

http://www.2e.org/files.htm

 

[crj]

I tried wipeout. but it says it can't read cdrive or any other. will download delpart.exe and give it a try. thanks for the reply.

 

[crj]

i just noticed when i type fdisk /status it shows the hard drive and size, but it is not showing a drive letter. if i run fdisk /status on one of my good hd it shows the drive letter. so it looks like it is there but lost. any ideas.

 

[jmatt]

Last time I checked , these were the names & sites for getting an utility to check the HD .

Maxtor's is called Powermax ,

http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/powermax.htm

Seagate's are DiscWizard , DiscWizard Starter Edition & DiscWizard Online

http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/drivers/discwiz_utilities.html

http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/drivers/discwiz.html

Quantum's is DiskManager , now owned by Maxtor .

http://www.maxtor.com/Maxtorhome.htm

IBM have a selection , such as Drive Fitness Test .

http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/support/download.htm

Fujitsu's is OnTrack DiskGo ,

http://www.fcpa.com/cgi-bin/goFrames.cgi/support/su_drivers.html

Western Digital's is Data Lifeguard Tools ,

http://www.wdc.com/service/ftp/drives.html#dlgtools

Samsung's is ClearHDD Program ,

http://www.samsungelectronics.com/support/hdd/utilities/utilities_03.html