Win XP and Partition Errors

Hello,

A couple of months ago I bought a new computer with XP Home (SP2). I have
been trying to change the 40 GB hard drive it came with to a 160 GB Seagate
hard drive. I used Seagate’s software to move the OS. But when I try to
create partitions with Partition Magic, I later get errors that say that the
LBA and CHS do not match.

But on any hard drive greater than 8 GB the LBA and CHS will never match,
only the number of sectors are used now to determine hard drive capacity. I
found a lot of other people have had this problem and their advise is to
forgot about it. But I don’t like that solution.

I later found out that Microsoft writes the hard drive geometry to the boot
sector and to any partitions but since there are not enough cylinders and
heads to give the right amount, there is an error. This is the source of the
error that not only Partition Magic gives but other hard drive test utilities
also give. I was wondering if anyone knew how to fix this such as writing
zeros to the cylinder and head values and having software that would see that
as a sign “not to use”.

Is there some way to write directly to the partition tables and correct this?

Thank you
Philip

"pogletree"
<You say "that not only Partition Magic gives but other hard drive test
utilities also give.....> Are you sure?

I found that Partition Magic 8a did not work satisfactorily with Windows XP
Pro + SP2 and stopped using it. It may be the same for XP Home. If I clone
with Acronis True Image Version 9 there are no errors reported by Acronis
Disk Director 10,but Partition Magic which did report errors.
So may be it is OK to forget about the errors reported by PM.

--
Uncle John

"pogletree" <pogletree@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:6DD3DF39-1267-405E-B32F-250AC6B67E24@microsoft.com...
> Hello,
>
> A couple of months ago I bought a new computer with XP Home (SP2). I have
> been trying to change the 40 GB hard drive it came with to a 160 GB
> Seagate
> hard drive. I used Seagate's software to move the OS. But when I try to
> create partitions with Partition Magic, I later get errors that say that
> the
> LBA and CHS do not match.
>
> But on any hard drive greater than 8 GB the LBA and CHS will never match,
> only the number of sectors are used now to determine hard drive capacity.
> I
> found a lot of other people have had this problem and their advise is to
> forgot about it. But I don't like that solution.
>
> I later found out that Microsoft writes the hard drive geometry to the
> boot
> sector and to any partitions but since there are not enough cylinders and
> heads to give the right amount, there is an error. This is the source of
> the
> error that not only Partition Magic gives but other hard drive test
> utilities
> also give. I was wondering if anyone knew how to fix this such as writing
> zeros to the cylinder and head values and having software that would see
> that
> as a sign "not to use".
>
> Is there some way to write directly to the partition tables and correct
> this?
>
> Thank you
> Philip

Thank you for the reply.

<You say "that not only Partition Magic gives but other hard drive test
utilities also give.....> Are you sure?

Yes, I downloaded (from another computer) a Linux live CD, booted it up and
ran “testdisk” and it said something like, “it appears that the hard drive is
formatted with 240 heads instead of the 255 heads that the BIOS reports”. 255
heads is right because I looked it up on Seagate’s website.

I then downloaded Seagate’s error software, made a bootable CD for it, ran
it and the hard drive itself passed but the Win XP partition failed with
“critical errors” although in the “report” it made for me it did not say what
those errors were.

I found that Partition Magic 8a did not work satisfactorily with Windows XP
Pro + SP2 and stopped using it.

Would you mind my asking what type of problems you had?

Thank you again
Philip

Pogletree

When I tried to make more than two portions PM would not complete the task
reporting to many errors. With Disk Director I all my partitions sized just
as I wanted them

--
Uncle John


"pogletree" <pogletree@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:2F5B10E9-38A2-4C86-A7BE-498AFD28A940@microsoft.com...
> Thank you for the reply.
>
> <You say "that not only Partition Magic gives but other hard drive test
> utilities also give.....> Are you sure?
>
> Yes, I downloaded (from another computer) a Linux live CD, booted it up
> and
> ran "testdisk" and it said something like, "it appears that the hard drive
> is
> formatted with 240 heads instead of the 255 heads that the BIOS reports".
> 255
> heads is right because I looked it up on Seagate's website.
>
> I then downloaded Seagate's error software, made a bootable CD for it, ran
> it and the hard drive itself passed but the Win XP partition failed with
> "critical errors" although in the "report" it made for me it did not say
> what
> those errors were.
>
> I found that Partition Magic 8a did not work satisfactorily with Windows
> XP
> Pro + SP2 and stopped using it.
>
> Would you mind my asking what type of problems you had?
>
> Thank you again
> Philip

"pogletree" <pogletree@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:
> Is there some way to write directly to the partition tables and correct
> this?

Yes. There are plenty of tools that can directly edit the partition table.
If you're not using one of them to help diagnose the error, then you're not
going to get a proper diagnosis. PM doesn't show you the actual partition
table, it only shows you its interpretation of it. You really want to
examine the actual partition. One such DOS-based tool is ptedit.exe, which
you'll find on your PartitionMagic CD. Its companion, ptedit32.exe, runs
from NT/2000/XP.

PM 7.01 and above works just fine with XP SP2. Earlier versions did not
properly support NTFS volumes and probably also did not support disks >
137GB.

> I downloaded (from another computer) a Linux live CD, booted it up and
> ran "testdisk" and it said something like, "it appears that the hard drive
> is
> formatted with 240 heads instead of the 255 heads that the BIOS reports".
> 255 heads is right because I looked it up on Seagate's website.

That's a clue. Exactly how did you copy one disk to the other? I've seen
that exact symptom (240 heads vs 254/255) when the HDD is temporarily moved
to another system to do the copying.

Neither 240 nor 255 is inherently more right than the other. With LBA
either will work just fine, and it's not unusual to find the exact same HDD
will appear one way in one system and the other way in another system. For
example, certain IBM, HP, and Compaq laptops autodetect disks as having 240
heads, while Dells, Toshibas, and many desktops will autodetect the same HDD
with 255 heads. Either will work, but the important thing is that it stays
consistent--if it's setup one way, only use it in that system.