Hard Disk Problems

cuffless

cuffless

New Member
I am trying to resize my main partition on my hard drive so i can install a second operating system. I have tried using Partition Magic 8.0 and Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0. My problem is my partition wont resize. I have run a check disk and it says that there are errors. Is there any chance i will have more luck trying to create a partition using the windows xp install disk? Will i need to completely wipe my hard drive and start again?
 
GParted is the free Linux Gnome Partition Editor that will easily resize partitions provided you have enough drive space free on it. The common recommendation is to first backup anything important and remove excess before attempting to shrink the primary on your 320gb if the one in your sig is being talked about there.

Shrinking a partition down in order to create a second will do one thing. "Take Time"! Expanding a partition on the other hand will go fast. Shrinking involve some degree of compression explaining that.

GParted works faster and easier at both resizing and creating new partitions. Once the second partition is created you simply use the Disk Management tool found in Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Storage to see that formatted.

Two things are needed to get GParted namely a cd or dvd burner and a blank cd-r with the 35mb iso disk image for the platform independent version of GParted to be burned onto a bootable disk. BurnOn has a free version that generally works the best while others will use Deep Burner another freeware burning program.

The 0.3.3.0 by that exact number was the last "platform independent" release for seeing MS, Mac, OS X, and other partition types besides Linux VFat created. you can get that fast at http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=115843&package_id=173828

BurnOn is free to use from http://www.burnworld.com/burnoncddvd/

The correct release that is platform independent will show that in the architecture column as you scroll down the download page there for the 0.3.3.0 release. That will be #16 going from top to bottom there since they haven't released a newer cross platform version since.

 
When you look at the display, does it show you have atleast 1 50gb health partition currently? You mentino some sectors were damaged, how much?

Another thing, HD are cheap, if you have sectors failing already I would recomend grabing a new drive, before you loose the drive alltogether..
 
Here is what happens when i try to resize the partition in Partition Magic 8.0

You can see that there is a primary partition
problem2kb4.jpg




When i go to resize i get this
problem3oc3.jpg




When i do a check disk i get this
problem1ha4.jpg



PC eye said:
GParted is the free Linux Gnome Partition Editor that will easily resize partitions provided you have enough drive space free on it. The common recommendation is to first backup anything important and remove excess before attempting to shrink the primary on your 320gb if the one in your sig is being talked about there.
Click to expand...

Doesnt Gparted come on the ubuntu live distro? I think i saw it when i was trying it out a while ago
 
GParted is a Linux tool. But you wouldn't want to create a VFat Linux type primary since the version that comes along with a distro is strictly for Linux purposes there as well as QParted. The platform independent is labeled just for that purpose. You can create Fat16 and 32 type primary and extended partitions as well as NTFS types.

The 7mb you are seeing unallocated is not bad sectors but the XP installer's lack of full hardware detection due to the variations seen when drives are mass produced. You will note the small grey area at the right end of the partiton that can be easily expanded into with GParted. The Vista installer does far better now seeing the option to format as well as resize partitions on the installation disk and in the Disk Management tool there.

For running chkdsk use the "chkdsk /f" command at the Run prompt to see the fix errors switch added when you reboot afterwards. That instructs the XP version of scandisk to repair any errors it can if found. The best way to find out if you have bad sectors is using the drive diagnostic tool provided by WD, Seagate, or whoever manufactures the drive(s) you use.

Yet while working on one old case here where the drive was obviously failing the WD tool first found 0% errors but once the existing NTFS primary was removed you couldn't create a new one on it. Later the WD failed to even see the drive.

Besides all that however it appears that this version of PM isn't doing the job foir you there. GParted again turns out to be a best option.
 
Thanks for your help. After running "chkdsk /f" i am able to resize my main partition in Acronis. It looks like i wont need to use Gparted this time. I will download it though as it may come in handy in the future.

Edit - Its all working now. I have got my new partition created. Do i need to install a boot manager before i install a second operating system? can anyone recommend me a good boot manager?

Edit 2 - I have read a tutorial saying that Acronis OS selector will be alright. Now all i need to do is wait for the OS to download.
 
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Glad to see the tool cleaned up the drive errors. The boot information will depend on what the second OS will be there. With Windows whether XP or Vista the second installation becomes the default with the newer version adding the older into it's own boot configuration as an option.

Vista wants the first primary however and will replace any existing copy while XP allowed you to install a second copy on other partitions. I ran into one when trying to put Vista on the second primary with XP Pro on the first. It refused and replaced Pro. For Linux you then have to work with the bootmenu.lst file and either Grub or Lilo added into the mbr if you don't find a 3rd party universal boot loader.

There was one ubuntu boot loader you saw on a 3 1/2" floppy that simply loaded the OS on the partition you selected whether Linux or MS some time back. No alterations to anything were needed on the hard drive to existing boot configurations there.

Another program saw a push button like gui for selecting any OS where you moved around with the TAB key and hit enter to load what was on any button. That was a little lame there however.
 
I don't think i can talk about what OS i plan to install on CF, but reading a tutorial on how to install it it says that the Acronis OS selector or the chain0 way is the easiest.
 
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That would be a retail software type OS selector there. The ubuntu boot floppy type mentioned before was seen a few years ago and I never was able to locate another download page for that particular tool. You also had to set the floppy drive as the default boot device which isn't too popular at this point in time. That can be annoying enough! :P
 
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