Tech: lost hard drive ?

Subject: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 11 Feb 05 - 03:51 PM

I've just added some new equipment and need some advice.
Computer is a Windows PC running WinME, with a CD-writer/DVD Rom drive and a 30GB Hard Drive. The 30BG is split into three partitions, C:Windows/D:Data/E:Programmes.
I've just added a DVD burner and a 120GB (UDMA/ATA133) second Hard Drive. I put the original CD and Hard Drive on primary IDE controller. The new drive and DVD burner are on the secondary IDE controller.
The DVD burner reads and plays CDs okay. The computer set-up recognises the new hard drive, but Windows is totally ignoring it.
Any ideas what I need to do to get windows to admit it is there?
Quack!
Geoff the Duck.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: GUEST,MMario
Date: 11 Feb 05 - 03:56 PM

Georff - has the new drive been partitioned and formatted?

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 11 Feb 05 - 03:58 PM

fdisk and format it.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From:
Date: 11 Feb 05 - 04:37 PM

Ummm, It's on the Primary Channel you said, but is it the Slave drive? Oh! Perhaps both the CD and the Hard Drive are both thinking they are the Master Drive? And The CD is in Position 1?

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Bert
Date: 11 Feb 05 - 04:43 PM

Is it plug and play? if not take it back and get one that is. I had similar problems with a mail order drive. never did get it to work even aftr spending hours on the phone to both the maker of the drive and Microsoft.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 11 Feb 05 - 05:17 PM

Do you have to map to it so your OS knows it's there? If ME doesn't provide any troubleshooting on this, check the Microsoft Knowledge base about Drive Mapping within that OS.

NEVER format a disk until you have exhausted all of the other possibilities. And then given the matter some more thought.

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 11 Feb 05 - 05:25 PM

Hi Geoff,

Ideally you should instal your hardware as follows

Primary IDE:- Hard drive as primary master, CD as primary slave.
Secondary IDE:- Hard drive as secondary master, DVD as secondary slave.

In each case this will work best with the hard drive at the end of the ribbon cable.

Also go into BIOS setup, and, and make sure that all four IDE channels are set to AUTO, as you quite often find that they are set by default to NONE.

That should work, but bear in mind that it may change your drive letters.

All I can tell you for sure is that it worked for me.

Let us know if it does, please.

Regards
Don T.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 11 Feb 05 - 05:32 PM

P.S. It may also need to be partitioned and formatted, but you can't do that until it is recognised. For Gods sake don't use fdisk to do that as fdisk automatically goes for C:

If you don't have access to Partition magic or similar, then temporarily instal the new HD as primary master and use a startup disk to fdisk it, then return to the layout above and format. Formatting isn't a problem with a new HD, as you can't lose data if there isn't any.

Don T.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 11 Feb 05 - 06:12 PM

With a system as old as this I think the BIOS answer is the best starting place. Drive mapping probably sets the BIOS, but I don't remember if WinME is set up for that. I've been fooling with it in a network environment, and you aren't setting up a network.

To get to the BIOS, there is usually a DOS looking black screen and white text displaying the information for the command when the computer first starts--something along the lines of "press F-8 (or 10) to reach system setup." That's the BIOS. You have to be quick sometimes to catch that setting; if you miss it, turn off the computer and try again. (You don't need to let Windows set up all of its stuff before turning it off.) Move through the screens and selections with the tab, up and down arrows, and the escape key. There is always the question at the end if you want to save the changes and quit Setup--if you aren't sure if you got it right, don't save the changes and go through it again.

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 11 Feb 05 - 06:14 PM

BTW: Using Partition Magic is an excellent way to manage your drives and is well worth the purchase price--but be sure you read the book before you start using it. You can mess yourself up if you don't pay attention.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 11 Feb 05 - 06:23 PM

I attach a string to my hard drives so I don't lose them.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 11 Feb 05 - 06:23 PM

Just one question/ point. In his post, Geoff had said:

"The computer set-up recognises the new hard drive"

I had taken that to mean things like the BIOS were right. He continues:

"but Windows is totally ignoring it.
Any ideas what I need to do to get windows to admit it is there?"

Jon

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 11 Feb 05 - 07:08 PM

Just make sure you've got backups of EVERYTHING before you touch it... we lost the whole computer last year.. still haven't got everything back.... still hoping we can still get it.... sob!

LTS

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 11 Feb 05 - 07:57 PM

Well spotted Jon.
The setup escape before operating system load-up recognises the new hard drive. The settings were saved before exiting the utility.

Old hard drive plus old CD-rom drive are NOW on PRIMARY IDE conector. Original hard drive is "Master" and CD-Rom Drive is set to "Slave". Both appear to be working properly.

NEW DRIVES are connected to the Secondary IDE connector. Hard Drive is first in the chain and set to Master. DVD writer is second in the chain and set to Slave..

I have created the three partitions on the 30GB drive using Acronis Partition Selector. - I have not yet got around to booting using the Acronis Partition Selector utility to see what that finds.

As for formatting the drive - I assumed that it would appear as an existing "unformatted" drive (which I could then format) and do not understand why it does not appear.

Quack!
Gtd.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 11 Feb 05 - 08:12 PM

You are loosing me Geoff. I had taken the 30GB drive to be the old drive. Maybe I'm being stupid but please confirm: has the new drive had partitions set on it?

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 11 Feb 05 - 08:15 PM

(Windows will ignore a disk that is not partitioned in a format it recognises)

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: GUEST,Bensson
Date: 11 Feb 05 - 08:17 PM

a common installation recommendation!

Most computer systems today have two IDE busses that allow two devices each.

If you only have one CD-ROM and one Hard Drive, it is recommended that you install the HD on the Primary IDE as the Master and the CD-ROM on the Secondary IDE as the Master.

If you install additional Hard Drives or CD drives, keep the Hard drives on the same IDE bus, and likewise with the CD-ROM's.

If your system has two Hard Drives and two CD-ROM's,

you would have HD1 in the Primary Master position, HD2 in the Primary Slave position,

CD1 [Writer] in Secondary Master and CD2 [DVD] in the Secondary Slave position.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 11 Feb 05 - 08:17 PM

The 30GB drive is the original hard drive. It is split into 3 partitions - C:Windows - D:Data - E:Programmes.
It is the NEW Drive (120GB) which is being ignored. I am trying to figure out why...
Quack!
Gtd.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Feb 05 - 08:20 PM

OK Geoff, that IS Why. The disk needs a partition on it before it will work for you.

Do you have a boot floppy?

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Bert
Date: 11 Feb 05 - 08:24 PM

That's exactly what heppened to me Geoff. Traded it in for a plug and play and it worked fine.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 11 Feb 05 - 08:30 PM

A couple of postings happened whilst I waa typing my replies.
OKAY...

1) - If Windows ignores an unformated drive - How am I supposed to get it instaled (in the machine) and then get it formatted?
Knoppix Linux (boots from CD without being installed) isn't spotting it either.
2) - Guest - Bensson - I will try putting both hard drives on the same connection with the new one as "Slave" and see if it makes a difference.
I'm off to sleep now, so will review advice and suggestions when time allows. (Tomorrow is Viking Festival in York (Jorvik) so might be out if rain holds off...)
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 11 Feb 05 - 08:30 PM

Geoff The route I would take is to boot to Dos with something with FDISK on and run that from the command line. If you want to play really safe, you could do as Don above suggests and temporarily have the new disk as the only hard disk on the system. Better if unsure than loosing everything.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 11 Feb 05 - 08:32 PM

Night All...
I'll look in late tomorrow....
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 11 Feb 05 - 08:37 PM

Geoff, Windows does recognise an unformatted drive but might not an unpartitioned drive. Partitioning is the step before formatting.

I am surprised that if the problem is as I've read it that Knoppix does not recognise it. I've not used it but would have expected it to find a disk on the system regardless of partition/format state.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 11 Feb 05 - 09:02 PM

Jon you are right about booting with the startup disk (I hope he made one, or the game becomes much more awkward), but fdisk only partitions C: as far as I know, which would erase all his software. It is essential to instal the new one temporarily as primary master, to fdisk it. Formatting can be done after returning the drives to normal.

Don T.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 11 Feb 05 - 09:59 PM

Partition Magic is still a good answer. Install it on the old drive, on the primary partition, then have it set up the new drive. You can partition it and tell it what format you want (FAT, FAT32, NTSF, etc). You can also set up rescue disks (Boot Magic when PowerQuest ran it. Symantec may have changed it). Partition Magic is a powerful program and is money well-spent.

(I also see a link for a free trial download).

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 01:58 AM

It is years since I needed to fdisk a drive - are you really SURE that there is not an option to set which physical drive to work on BEFORE starting the actual fdisk procedure? If the drive is not being recognised at all on start up (which has its own set of trouble shooting procedures) then of course the second drive won't be there for fdisk to play with.

Also - in the modern BIOS, there is often an auto detect - which if you set the BIOS to give you verbose text messages on boot-up - which will tell you if it is seeing and recognising the drive (and what it is) or not. Also - depending on the age of the BIOS you may have to muck around with LBA settings to talk to a 120 Gb drive....

Sorry about the string comment before... one of the Fooles Troupe got access to the PC...

Robin

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 03:56 AM

You may not be able to see the new HD in WinExplorer, but should check and see if it's visible in Device Manager. If it's visible in WinME - Control Panel - Device Manager, you should be able to do a partition and format with built-in WinME utilities.

If this is a new Hard Drive and is pre-formatted FAT32, WinMe should be able to USE a single partition up to 2 TB, but if you need to reformat WinME CANNOT FORMAT a partition larger than 32 MB, so you'll need to partition it (assuming you can find it), or use a "third-party" program. Hard drives sometimes come with a disk that has an "extended capability" format utility.

NOTE: No Windows version, including WinXP, can do a NEW FORMAT in FAT32 of a partition larger than 32MB. If you have a larger pre-formatted FAT32 drive and want to use it all in one FAT32 partition, you should NEVER attempt to reformat using Windows built-in utilities. Larger partitions must be formatted as NTFS in order to use the Windows utilities for setup, and earlier Win versions may not be able to read an NTFS partition.

A somewhat "exotic" problem sometimes occurs if you move a Hard Drive from one computer to another, or during upgrades to WinME. If the drive came from a machine that had TweakUI installed, Tweak allows you to "hide" a drive. Even if the drive wasn't hidden on the earlier machine, or prior to an upgrade to WinME on the same machine, if TweakUI was present on the former system occasionally the drive will appear to have the "hidden" attribute set when WinME looks for it, so it won't display in WinExplorer. You should still see it in Device Manager. Mickey's suggestion is to install TweakUI on the new WinME and unhide it.

When you add a CD or DVD drive, occasionally the new drive isn't immediately visible. This isn't your exact problem, but if you've swapped leads around on the IDE controller it might be similar. WinME still allows "Real Mode" drivers that can access a drive directly. It also can (and should) use "Protected Mode" Drivers that make all hardware access through Windows. IF two similar devices are installed and one uses a Real Mode driver while the other uses a Protected Mode driver, WinME assumes you have two drivers installed for the same drive. It assigns the same drive letter to both drives. WinME will normally open the Protected Mode driver first, so the "other drive with the same name" is never visible. The normal fix is to go into Device Manager and manually assign a new drive letter to one of the devices.

If your new HD is a recent model, and a capacity of 120GB suggests it is, it should have come preformatted. Partitioning and reformatting should be "last resort" things to do. The only format that can be applied by Windows for partitions over 32MB is NTFS. Because of cluster size round-off, using Windows FORMAT on a "120GB" drive will likely get you less than 100GB usable, instead of the original usable 114 GB or so. With larger drives, a 160GB may drop down to 116GB or so.

As several have suggested, the most likely problem is that your BIOS setup needs to be adjusted to recognize the new Hard Drive.

The above are just "but maybe" thoughts about some known other possibilities.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: nutty
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 10:32 AM

Geoff .... I know very little about what you have been trying to do but the tutor on my beginners computer maintenance course has recommended this site ..... just thought it might help

PCTechGuide

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: mack/misophist
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 11:27 AM

Now that you have 4 drives inside the case, I urge you to find some way to monitor the case or CPU temperature. If the case is poorly cooled, you may need to add extra cooling to preserve the chips in the new drives. I lost a couple of drives before I identified and solved the problem. In my case the answer was Kingwin mobile racks made of aluminium with extra cooling fans. It brought the temperature down by more than 10º F.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 08:43 PM

Ahh - all that stress is affecting my brain... it just takes longer to remember...

When I got my second hand machine last year, it came with 2 disks formatted and WIN2000 installed. Win98SE fdisk had no problem seeing both disks, and switching between them.

Robin

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 08:51 PM

Win2000 is a lot smarter and more stable than WinME. It was WinME that drove me to a dual platform for a number of years. I finally ditched it altogether. In my opinion, WinME is the weak link in this entire operation.

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: GUEST,Geoff the Duck
Date: 13 Feb 05 - 11:39 AM

Thanks for all the suggestions so far. It looks as if the problem might be the drive not being partitioned.

John on Kansas - I couldn't find a "Device Manager" within Control Panel, but found System Information via the "Start Menu" [ Start - Programmes - Accessories - System Tools - System Information... ]. This gives me the "Microsoft Help" screen. In the section the "System Summary - Components - Storage - Disks" Gives me :-

Description        GENERIC IDE DISK TYPE47
Manufacturer        (Standard disk drives)
Model        IDE DISK TYPE47
Media Loaded        Yes
Media Type        Fixed hard disk media
Partitions        3
Size        28.63 GB (30,736,613,376 bytes)
Partition        Disk #0, Partition #0
Partition Size        12.18 GB (13,078,162,944 bytes)
Partition        Disk #0, Partition #1
Partition Size        13.41 GB (14,394,240,000 bytes)
Partition        Disk #0, Partition #2
Partition Size        3.03 GB (3,257,210,880 bytes)
        
Description        GENERIC IDE DISK TYPE80
Manufacturer        (Standard disk drives)
Model        IDE DISK TYPE80
Media Loaded        Yes
Media Type        Fixed hard disk media
Partitions        0
Size        114.50 GB (122,942,324,736 bytes)

                     **************************
I presume this tells me that it recognises that the second hard drive is there, but is not yet partitioned.

I'll post again when I have done some more checking of things.

Nutty - that link you gave seems to contain useful stuff - I will read it carefully before doing much else.
Quack
GtD.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 13 Feb 05 - 12:37 PM

How to Use the Fdisk Tool and the Format Tool to Partition or Repartition a Hard Disk has a fairly complete "official Mickey" description of setup for hard disks and is old enough to include WinME instructions. While repartitioning (fdisk) and reformatting should normally be a last resort, it does look like WinME is telling you there's no partition defined on your one drive. There is quite a bit of description of system and setup requirements at the link that may help you if you read carefully before you start actually doing stuff.

Others should note that the above instructions may not apply fully if you have an OS later than WinME.

I don't have a Win98 system up due to a graphics card blowout, so it's difficult to verify much about older systems.

A typo in the previous post:

NOTE: No Windows version, including WinXP, can do a NEW FORMAT in FAT32 of a partition larger than 32MB.

should have said 32GB of course.

Although that was stated in a couple of Mickey's KB articles, I'm finding some conflicts. WinXP can't format a FAT32 partition larger than 32GB by design, although it can read/write to one up to at least 2TB (and one source says up to 8TB). They assume that any partition larger than 32GB should be NTFS if you're running WinXP.

Early Win2K can't read/write to a FAT32 partition larger than 32GB, and forces you to NTFS for anything larger. That may have been fixed with one of the later Service Releases; but I can't confirm it (yet). As for WinXP, the preferred format for Win2K is NTFS, except for very small partitions, although either should run okay off a FAT32 disk.

Early Win95, versions bought in a box, can't read/write FAT32, but some OEM versions could. If you're stuck with FAT (FAT16) the maximum partition sizes are pretty small. Win95 Service Pack 1 possibly includes FAT32 capability, but finding info on the old OSs is getting harder all the time.

Win98 should be able to access FAT32, and later versions appear to have been able to format FAT32 partitions as large as (and maybe larger than) they could read. WinME is really just a "super Win98" and should be able to access a FAT32 drive; and it should be able to format "large partitions," although I'm seeing conflicting info on just how large "large" means.

If you use the Windows methods/tools built into your OS, it shouldn't let you do anything that will not be compatible with your OS. (Or at least it should warn you if you try to.)

John

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 13 Feb 05 - 01:20 PM

If it helps, my system, before I changed to XP, ran 98SE. I had no problem installing a 60Gb HDD, and both partitioning and formatting same during installation of the OS, using Win 98Se's own format command. I don't know where the 32Gb limit comes from, but I didn't find it so.


Don T.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 13 Feb 05 - 02:21 PM

Hi All! Back again.
OKAY.....
I found my Acronis OS Selector floppy disk, which allows me to access its disk management tools. It looked at the new drive and told me that there were no partitions on it. I used its tools to create a new partition (20GB) and then booted up into WinME. Acronis OS Selector allows you to create partitions and format them into a variety of file systems used by Windows, Linux and other operating systems. It also will resize, copy or move partitions. A useful tool....
The new partition was recognised by Windows Explorer as a 20GB hard drive.
Of course just to be awkward it has decided to call it Drive:D and rename my D: and E: partitions to E: and F: respectively, which meant that all shortcuts and the like were to a different drive letter than the one they should be looking on. As a result a lot of things stopped working, but at least I have established what the initial problem is due to.
I have now deleted the new partition and my computer has returned to normal - as you can see ;0)
I'll have a think about my next steps to get the system running with an added second hard disc.
Thanks to all for your help so far.
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Mrs.Duck
Date: 13 Feb 05 - 02:54 PM

Excuse the thread creep but just thought I'd say hello der as you have been upthere ALL day.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: robomatic
Date: 13 Feb 05 - 03:08 PM

I have not used WinME for some time as tho it is not as bad as a lot of people say, it is much less convenient than either Win2000 or WinXP, particularly in dealing with media files and large HDs. I know that Win2000 and WinXP do not handle larger partitions (above 137GB) without having their Service Paks installed (SP4 and SP1 respectively). Be careful that your WinME is set up to handle your maximum partition choice as it is an 'older' system.
Also I think there is a way to force Windows to maintain letter identification to your pre-existing drives so that it will give your latest partitions the higher letters.

Good luck!

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 13 Feb 05 - 03:29 PM

Personally, for look and ease of use I have regarded each new user interface since Win3.1 as a step downwards. They may be more "powerful" in computing power but the bloat factor makes everything slower, so I don't see much of a gain compared to the potential increase in power of the computer processors.

If anyone knows of the trick to force letters to remain fixed, please tell us how!
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 13 Feb 05 - 03:49 PM

I remember reading that Win2000 is pretty rigid about letter drives compared to the other operating systems; in ME try going into the system tools in (start --> programs --> accessories --> system tools) and see if there is something in there to help you. When I used ME it used to crash all of the time, and always at the worst times.

Are you planning to back up this computer on the new big hard drive? Norton Ghost works well for that, and I seem to recall it has some limited partitioning ability. You might want to look into that program for both of these functions.

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: nutty
Date: 13 Feb 05 - 03:59 PM

There's a tutorial on PC TECH GUIDE that deals specifically with installing a second drive ...... it might help

HERE

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 13 Feb 05 - 04:59 PM

FDisk, FAT32, format - in DOS. Check name of drive in BIOS or device manager before FDisk. To be sure (to be sure) before you boot to DOS, unplug the ribbon cable to the original hard drive, that way you can't hurt it, but FDisk should identify the drive you are about to work on, and having done thejob in September I am sure (but can't remember how) that it is possible to Fdisk things other than the C drive.

When I added the extra drive in September (it has since died, possibly due to heat in the removable hard drive caddy which had no self ventilation) I was very vexed to find that in 98 it is NOT possible to designate the new drive: it will automatically become D, so you may have to adjust references to things that were partitions above C on your old drive. In XP you can designate the new drive, and again I have done just done it for a mate, designating the new drive F and G, but it can be done from Windows. Details I found in the knowledge base, and cannot remember. I am pretty sure XP was the first version of Windows to permit such designation.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 13 Feb 05 - 05:01 PM

Instructions for "renaming" a CD-ROM drive in Win95 are given in KB article 121926. WinME should be similar enough, with some adjustment in the first couple of seps. Since Win95 allowed you to use real-mode drivers loaded from Config.Sys and/or Autoexec.bat or protected mode drivers loaded by Windows, it sometimes assumed the protected mode driver loaded for a second CD drive was for the same drive, and gave both CD drives the "same name."

The same general method should work for any drive.

quoting:

RESOLUTION
Assign the CD-ROM drive running in protected mode to a different drive letter.

You can change the drive letter of a CD-ROM drive by performing the following steps:
1. Click the Start button, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel.
2. Double-click the System icon, then click the Device Manager tab.
3. Select the CD-ROM you want to change from the list, then click the Properties button.
4. Click the Settings tab.
5. In the Reserved Drive Letters section, set Start Drive Letter and End Drive Letter to the drive letter you want the CD-ROM to use. Click the OK button.
6. Click the Start button on the taskbar and click Shut Down. Then click Restart The Computer.
The CD-ROM drive letter should now be the letter you selected and the second CD-ROM should be accessible.

endquote.

Basically, you use Device Manager to assign to a specific drive the range of "names" it can use, and set both ends of the range to the same drive letter.

Win2K and WinXP allow a very similar assignment when you "mount" a drive from your LAN, and the customary selection there is to start at Z for mounted drives and work backwards for such drives.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 13 Feb 05 - 06:36 PM

That will, I assume, be useful in the future John, but here the problem is having a hard drive with partitions C,D,and E, then adding a further hard drive and wanting to call it F, so as not to have to re-point all links to the D and E partitions.

Your solution I think refers only to CD or DVD drives.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 13 Feb 05 - 07:13 PM

The KB note refers specifically to CD drives (DVD wasn't invented then?) but at least in Win2K and WinXP you can use the same method for any drive. I don't have an older system up to check it out, but you should be able to do the same thing for a hard drive in Win98 or WinME. Your hard drives should show once you get to Device Manager, and what you can do will depend on what options are offered.

The details may vary, but at least it suggests a place to look.

The older option was to put a bunch of SET commands in Autoexec.bat, and I believe WinME still lets you use one, but that can get really messy.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 13 Feb 05 - 07:52 PM

As far as I know - windows insists on the series -

A floppy1
B floppy 2 - whether it's there or not
C Drive 1 partn1
D Drive 2 partn1
E Drive 1 partn2 etc till it's all used,
then
Drive 2 partn2 etc till it's all used

then CD's, Imation 120 Mb drives, USBs, etc however it bloody wants...

You can force anything above the hard drives to another Letter (I do) as mentioned above.

So if you have 2 physical HDs, then don't set up everything until you have Disk 2 partn 1 recognised as D... you are just wasting your time otherwise....

Robin

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 14 Feb 05 - 12:24 PM

I wrote a posting this afternoon, but it seems to have got lost in transit.
I'll try it again later....
Quack!
GtD

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 14 Feb 05 - 01:09 PM

Foulestrope, you can alter the sequence in XP.

Whe I buy another hard drive we canplay the game and see if it can be done in 98 or ME, but my recollection is that the KB defintely siad it couldn't - except for CD and DVD as JOhn says.

What we need to test is whether John's system works for hard drives and hard drive partitions - the reason being that if it does, you can allocate the removable drive to Z, put backups on it, then remove it and leave it on the shelf, secure.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 14 Feb 05 - 09:21 PM

Unfortunately I don't have a Win98 still up, due to a hardware wear-out. It's also been quite a while since I've done much maintenance on anything except Win2K and WinXP.

I do recall the fancy dance from way back in Win3.11 when you could use SET commands to "rename" drives so that the one that wanted to be D:\ would look like it was F:\ etc. Since you couldn't redirect to a drive letter that was in use, you sometimes had to set one to Z, set the other one to X, move the first one back to where the other one was, etc., all with a sequence of SET instructions in Config.sys and/or Autoexec.bat. Not really a recommended practice except for very simple cases.

Device Manager, or Hardware Manager, whichever you have, should let you specify the connection, or at least define a range for it, for any of the devices on the machine; but it's too long ago and the memory is too full of other stuff... I certainly can't argue with those of you who can actually look at it, and apologize if I gave you a goose - - - to chase.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 15 Feb 05 - 05:03 AM

Why do Microsloth have to be so bloody mindedly awkward and inept. I uset to run a Commodore Amiga 1200 (bought about 12 or 13 years back). It handled ANY drive, disc or partition using a user defined name. You could call your drives logical names such as System, Work, Games or even Eric and the computer would remember which they were. You could use multiple floppy discs for data, and when the computer needed the data which the programme you were using had stored on a specific disc (e.g. "artwork" or "DTP") it would ask you to insert that specific disc.
It didn't matter where in the system something was, the operating system dealt with the name you had defined. You could run a programme which was on removeable media such as a floppy disc, or use a ZIP disc for all your Art or DTP related programmes. If it needed to use shared libraries or fonts which were on the system boot disc (or even stored on a separate named flopy disc) all you needed to organise was an "Assign" - a small script of a couple of lines which told the programme which disc to look at for the directory you needed (the computer would then ask for you to insert the "fonts" floppy).

I find it so primitive and backwards that a computer system is not capable of keeping the data and programmes you have installed in a logical relationship in cyberspace. I expect things to work sensibly, but Microsoft screw it up every time.

Rant over!

I've just had an idea I want to try out, so I'll report back if it works. Acronis OS Selector allows me to create "Hidden" partitions. I wonder what might happen to Drive Letters if I make partition one on this "New D: drive" a hidden "Invisible" partition. Might it shunt the "D:" back down to where it used to be? I'll see what happens and report back.
Quack!
Geoff.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: GUEST,foolestroupe - "I come fru da window!"
Date: 15 Feb 05 - 08:00 AM

Buried in a box somewhere I have the source code listing for the (floppy) Disk Operating System (and it was a real programmable DOS) that was in the external floppy disk for ... Amiga? or something ... you could actually program the disk to do interesting things not intended by the OS makesr...

I remember NewDos80 for the TRS80 used to do cute things - such as keep all the batch files in a single file to save space, and run and identify SD, etc (5") disks with differing standards of tracks (and numbers of tracks) including custom ones which had a mix od densities on the disk, and many other wonderful things.... often wonder what happened to the source code for that....

Geoff, My message above about the order of the partitions is what you will have to live with, I'm sorry - you can shunt other drives around, but I know of no other way to set up the order of the disks. It's to do with some very basic things in the design of the HW & SW of DOS/Windoze9x... IDE channels & all that esoteric stuff...

If the 2nd HD is to be a recognised Windows partition, you will just have to live with it being D drive, and change all your links.... Windows will search for the correct place, but doesn't always get it right, so if it doesn't, just say NO, then manually modify the link.

Been there, done that, got the T-shirt to prove it... etc

Robin

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: GUEST,Stilly River Sage
Date: 15 Feb 05 - 09:38 AM

I have my Dad's old Amiga in a box here. I don't know what work he did on it, but I think it was substative, and one of these days I'll crank it up and try it out. Then you who have some familiarity will know what's up when you see an "Amiga Computer--help!" thread start up! :)

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 15 Feb 05 - 10:31 AM

Geoff, you could always consider Linux as an alternative to MS. I've no regrets in moving my main PC over that way, although I keep my laptop on Win, at least in part to run a couple of things I can't run using Wine.

The UNIX method of handling storage devices is different to the Windows one. I know you could liken c: to hda0, etc. but really from a users point of view, if you had 2 hard disks, you could just view it as one big disk. I've 2 disks on this PC, /bin happens to be on one and /home happens to be on another. If I was to open something like Konqurer (think Windows Explorer), I see all the direcrories as one. I've no need to remember in Win terms for \bin I need drive C or \home is on D:.

I don't think the programs worry about it either. Rather different to the Win scenario where you add a drive and by default (there must be ways of fixing this) at least on some versions that you end up with a drive letter inserted in the sequence and Win being as dumb as it is, then complains it can't find x:abc and calls you stupid because it has decided to re-assign existing drive letters.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 15 Feb 05 - 11:32 AM

Jon - part of the reason for getting a bigger hard drive is so that I can organise a dual booting system with one of the options being some variety of linux.
There are practical "work related" reasons why we can't get rid of Windows, but I want to find out what linux is capable of and decide whether I like it or not.
Stilly River Sage - the Amiga was (and still is) a wonderful computer system which unfortunately lost out due to a bunch of bad decisions by the management of Commodore, which eventually forced them to "go bust".
The user interface was years ahead of Microsoft, with a WIMP (Window / I? / Mouse / Pointer) system while Microsoft were still running everything by DOS. In many ways the Windows interface is STILL a long way behind what the Amiga could do over a dozen years back.
The real joy of the Amiga is that it was incredibly efficient. I can still run art manipulation programmes on my Amiga with a total of 16MB ram which will do a better job than the equivalent Windows programme hogging 128MB chip ram and a sodding big hard disk "swap file". The amiga, at the same time would be happily smoothly multi-tasking, running a DTP programme, text editor, Midi sequencer and a "Vector Gaphics" artwork programme.
With the Amiga "Multitasking meant that every programme took its fair share of processor time which made each programme appear to run simultaneously. Compare this with Windows which effectively stops all other programmes working whilst each task hogs ALL the processors for seconds at a time.
The amiga was also ideal for video work as it natively ran in PAL and NTSC video modes, so you did not need to convert your output into another format. It was already in a suitable format for a TV screen whether American or European specification.
I still us my Amiga for certain tasks because it does them better than Windows can, but the machine is over a decade old, has 16 MB RAM and an 80MB hard drive and doesn't have the capacity for certain operations any more.
There are feeware Amiga emulators available (UAE runs in varieties for Windows and Linux), but you need to own the "Kickstart Rom" from a real Amiga before you can use them.
If you do decide to play at Amiga I'll give you what help you might need.
Quack!
Geoff.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 15 Feb 05 - 04:36 PM

Also Jon

Windows, since Win98 when the FAT32 format came along, has been able to mount multi-disk drives. A "spanned volume," (say D:\ for example) can be composed of up to 26 physical drives and can have at total of up to 2TB space - and the whole thing could be all called "D:\."

It hasn't been done much, possibly because most people have enough trouble keeping one or two drives up and in good shape without worrying about more complex setups. Even though the "drive control" is available to do it, there are other limitations and most user machines haven't had fast enough I/O and/or enough RAM to do the bookkeeping, as examples.

I'm not sure that being able to do that actually depends on using FAT32 or better format; but the descriptions for how to do it don't seem to appear before then. With earlier versions, you may also have needed drivers/controllers that weren't in the default installation; but it does appear(?) that they were available.

With Win2K, descriptions for "Mirror Volumes," where everything is written to two separate physical drives, began to get some visibility. I think this is what's called a Raid(0) configuration?

Windows also offers "Stripe Volumes" (Raid(3)?) in which everything is written (randomly?) to two out of three physical drives. The individual physical devices can be set up as "movables" so that a failed drive can be removed and replaced without reboot.

Most of the stuff I've seen is written in terms of Win2K, NT4, or WinXP (or later) but I don't know that these last two require them. They wouldn't have been too useful at "user level" with the hardware available with most earlier versions.

These "other kinds" of drive layouts (Mickey now calls them "volumes" rather than "drives" or "partitions.") are only of academic/curiosity interest to me, and probably to you too; but they are out there "in the Window(s)."

John

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 15 Feb 05 - 04:57 PM

Thanks for the info John. I never knew Windows had that capability. Even with this new knowledge, I must admit to being surprised at Win 98. My wild guess with such a capability would have followed the NT route (not that I've ever used that but I believe Win2K pro I have is a "descendant").

I've never had any dealings with Raid - it's a good thing but I've never had the need for my own home usage.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 15 Feb 05 - 05:16 PM

On the Amiga they were always "Volumes".
RAID stands for Redundant Array (of) Inexpensive Discs - and essentially is about ensuring that all information is stored in more than one location, so when one disc blows up you are not reliant on it - the data is still there.

Creating a partition then "hiding" it was partially successful, but I have decided it isn't quite what I need. I'll wait until I can organise Drive Imaging and then back-up everything. Once I've done that, I can start to work on a fresh clean install of the stuff I actually want on the (windows) computer. I can also sort out the Linux innstallation.
Jon - which "flavour" do you use, and is one to try? I've just picked up a magazine which has Mandrake 10.1 on its cover disc. Any comments?
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 15 Feb 05 - 05:46 PM

Windows through WinMe were pretty much "extensions" of DOS. Win98 was about the first one that really introduced the "protection layer" to keep programs from having direct disk access, but backward compatibility problems required it to allow easy overide so that old programs would still run (mostly).

NT3, and to some extent NT4, were intended to be "server grade" with all the protections built in, but they turned out to be pretty "doggy" for user machines.

Win2K (user classes) was an attempt to apply NT4 concepts, but actually make them work for ordinary users. It's not bad, but there's still a big gap between what appears to the typical user and the "special kits" you have to open for administration. You sort of have to learn to wear two different hats to really run it and to control it.

WinXP was sort of a "start from zero" thing. They looked at all the legacy stuff, but where necessary some of it was removed, and quite a lot of new things added. You can choose "Classic View" to make it look like it's similar to the "old 'uns" but it really isn't. If you try to run with inadequate hardware, or try to use a lot of non-compliant "legacy" programs it can look pretty clunky; but if you run it on an "XP Class" machine and use qualified/compliant programs, it's by far the best user OS they've come up with.

They think that XP Server is pretty good too, but I don't have any real need to know whether that's really true - for now. I suspect that, when run on appropriate hardware and "by the rules" it's probably "better" than previous Win/NT server OSs, but that's not a choice I need to make.

The "next generation" Longhorn was promised 2 or 3 years ago, and is now scheduled for 2 or 3 years from now. What I've seen is sort of scary, but maybe we'll get lucky and the vaporware will vaporize before it gets here...

John

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 15 Feb 05 - 06:56 PM

Geoff, I use SUSE 9.2. I can't be sure but I think comments here in some thread or other counted amongst the reasons for me going that way. I apologise that I can't be more specific than that but I honestly can not remember. All I can say is that I'm happy with the product.

I do have a version of Mandrake 8.1 kicking around here somewhere. My objection to that concerned some hardware problems and harddrake (their hardware support thing). None of the web links they were suppose to support I wanted (or maybe even a lookup) worked and I was less than impressed.

That said, if you have a free copy and I'm understanding you correctly, I'd say give it a whirl and see how you get on with it in your "experiment". The "feel" you get for running apps will really come down to KDE or other window manager such as gnome anyway.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 15 Feb 05 - 07:08 PM

The clever special DOS I was referring to earlier may nave been the C64 rather than the Amiga.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 17 Feb 05 - 04:24 AM

Just remembered what the I? in WIMP stood for - Window Icon Mouse Pointer.....
And the Amiga did it better than Microsloth ever has. Things sch as "shortcuts" on the Workbench - with Windows since 3.1 every programme sticks one there without you asking and thay jst clutter your screen without doing anything useful. (Actually that was the good point about Win3.1 - it kept your stuff in user defined boxes so you could find them). The Amiga, on the other hand allowed you to locate anything - a programe, a single document or a drawer containing data/programmes etc. - and temporarily "leave it out" on thw workbench. When you no longer needed it available, you just clicked on a "Put Away" menu item and the item goes back to the drawer it lives in.
Don't know about the Mackintosh - I've never had much contact with them other than for keeping the rain off...
Quack!
GtD

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 17 Feb 05 - 05:39 PM

Next payday I'll head over to the campus computer store and take advantage of one of the few perks that university employees enjoy: inexpensive software. I'll pick up the upgrade for Win XP Pro ($21) and the MS Office Suite ($21). There was another one I wanted that is $7, but I can't remember which it is now. Anyway. . .

I've seen talk here at Mudcat about difficulties when upgrading to XP from Win2000 Pro. (The computer store only offers the new OS program as an "upgrade," if that makes any difference.) Any thoughts on it? I use an HP Pavilion 9870. It could use some more memory, but it runs fine and has lots of bells and whistles. I'll clean everything up, do my scans, run a backup in Ghost. Any thoughts on approaching this upgrade? Cautionary tales?

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 24 Feb 05 - 01:31 AM

Silly me, posting about upgrading that computer. The very next day three hoodlums kicked in my side door and stole both computers and sundry other appliances. (A neighbor saw it happen, got the vehicle license, but they haven't been caught, for whatever reasons.) My external hard drive (the backup of my computer) went out the door at the same time. I'm now using XP pro, and the only update I had to do was to update from the XP Home version on the new computer I picked up on Monday. Nice to have a new one, but I'm always going to regret the many years worth of material lost in the old one. I have some stuff on disks, but not nearly as much as I should have.

Lost hard drive, indeed!

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 24 Feb 05 - 08:26 AM

SRS -

It seems to be the season for hard drive stuff. I just received a replacement (under warrenty) for a 160GB external that went toes up. I lost essentially everything on the drive, but fortunately there was only one file that wasn't replicated somewhere else in backups. (Somewhere in about 80 CDs?????: but I have indexes.)

The odd thing was that the drive kept accepting writes to the drive, and everything looked okay until I tried to copy back to another drive. Then about 60% of the stuff was "corrupted," and a lot of stuff that looked good was sort of questionable. My suspicion is a head crash, probably due to mishandling with the forklift at the retail place. Once it went, you could watch things crumble - rapidly progressive.

While it was still claiming all the stuff was there, I ran a DOS "DIR H:\*.*/S>filelist.txt," and it worked perfectly, so I know exactly what went down. (360,503 Files - 79,989,555,702 bytes, listed in a Word .doc 8,384 pages long.)

The good news is that recently my AV system scan only has to check about 480,000 files, so it goes a lot quicker. Not too long ago it was running just over 1,040,000 on 3 drives ... But I've cleaned things up since then as well ...

John

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 24 Feb 05 - 04:19 PM

I'm thinking about where my backup drive is going to live (read: hide) when it isn't in use. And now it sounds like you're telling me I need a backup for my backup! Oy!

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 24 Feb 05 - 06:47 PM

SRS -

The crumbled external drive was very much unexpected, and was apparently what the reliability guys call an "early failure." The thing that was really surprising is that "modern" machines have pretty good diagnostics built in - or installed as software "managers" - and I got no warning. The first symptom was a bunch of files that just wouldn't copy back from the drive.

I managed to reformat, but the switch from FAT32 to NTFS defaulted to about 120GB instead of the original 160GB. (It's a cluster size default, and I didn't bother to partition.) About two days later the drive started making noises, and within a couple of hours it just quit completely. Probably scraped enough loose media off the platters to lock the heads(?).

When my "art collection" and "her" genealogical files (lots of large photo scans) outgrew the small CD rack beside the machine, I made myself a 10-drawer "Art cabinet" that will hold about 140 CDs per drawer - with 3 larger drawers in the base for a few prints; but I'm about to the point of having to throw old backup CDs away to make room for the fresh ones. Backups do often include a lot of "redundancy" so a full set of every "working" file I've got in archives probably would fit on about 100 CDs; but there's all that sorting that would have to be done to get a "one copy of each file" set.

One of the reasons for getting the drive that failed was to have room to make mass file copies from backup CDs to consolidate archives. Theoretically, if you copy the same file, you'll overwrite and automatically eliminate some of the duplication, but only if the file names are exactly the same and the folder layout is the same. Of course, if you overwrite, you're only saving the last copy you copied back to the disk. That's one of the problems with CD data backups - because the CD folder name rules are different than hard drive rules, so the burner program renames stuff, often truncating the name for the same file differently every time you burn a new backup that includes the file.

Data DVDs have the same problem with filenames, and I've not found them useful because it's an unworkable (extremely slow) process getting a few data files back from them. Like tape, you need enough free HD space to restore entire backups so that you can get the specific individual files from the HD. Of course with tape, if you make a new sort, you can re-use the tape for the "reorganized" backup. With CDs/DVDs you just get a lot of coasters and Xmas reflectors.

Windows supposedly has a decent "backup" utility, that would let you put stuff on CDs you could hide in the basement; but some highly publicized incidents where they gave very specific instructions about how to back up stuff when migrating to new versions leave me a little dubious. In one such incident they admitted that they'd thoroughly tested the backup instructions and they worked perfectly - but nobody at Mickey's place ever checked whether you could restore anything from the backups. In this case you couldn't.

One of the major storage equipment makers ran an ad about 20 years ago for "the perfect backup device." They called it the "WOM" - for "Write-Only Memory." The ad claimed "you can send everything you've got to it, and it'll never get full." They reported that they got something like 20,000 inquiries from people wanting to order it, several of whom came back and requested they be put on the list to be notified when it was available - after they were told it didn't really exist. (It was an April 1 issue of the magazine where it ran, and the picture in the ad was obviously a chunk of 2x4, painted black, with the "input-only" cable tied in a bow to an eye-bolt in one end.) Lots of people make backups that resemble that device.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 25 Feb 05 - 05:12 AM

Now that we have DVDs and very high capacity hard drives, the sensible backup route would seem to be Drive Imaging. I am currently looking at a 15 day evaluation trial of Acronis True Image (current BLICKY), which has had a couple of good write-ups which reckon it is currently more reliable or versatile than the opposition.
I've not had time to do much playing about with it yet, but it does seem user friendly.
It runs initially via Windows, but if your hard drive is trashed you can restore things via it's own CD-Booting disc.
It's big claim is that it makes an image of Everything on the hard drive at the moment you run the programme, including all the files belonging to the Windows Operating System which standard backup programmes tell you they cannot back-up because a programme is running.
You can back up a complete hard drive or any partitions individually. You can then save the resulting image file on a different partition (or external drive), or it will automatically split it into chunks and burn it directly onto a series of CDs or to DVD. Once you have a full image, you can then do incremental images which add recent changes to the backup set you have already made.
Once you have the image this one lets you "Mount" it as a "virtual" drive, so you can browse through it using a standard file manager and copy or retrieve individual files as if they were on a standard (read only) drive.

I'll report back when I have had a better chance to try it out.
Quack!
Geoff the Duck.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 25 Feb 05 - 05:19 AM

This "Write Only Memory" device - it sounds like an interesting concept. Perhaps somebody should demonstrate it to Bill Gates and store his memory for posterity. They could hit him about the head with it whilst repeating the traditional Microsoft Mantra "Abort.... Retry.... Fail..." until his system reboots.
Just a thought to lighten the day...
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 25 Feb 05 - 05:35 AM

When one of the more recent Win versions was new, the most popular cartoon posted at Microsoft, and at many places doing business with them, was a simple "button" with caption "OH SHIT!"

The label on the button was the "flag" logo and the word "STRAT"

Sort of like wringing out the "backup" program and forgetting to test the "restore."

John

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 25 Feb 05 - 06:07 AM

WOM! Don't remember hearing of that one but I like it! Memory you could never read - as some over here may say - about as much use as a chocolate fire guard.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 25 Feb 05 - 09:49 AM

Unfortunately - lots of people who are verrrrry careful about making their backups never check to see whether they can actually restore anything from them. Might as well use the WOM.

I've seen some very embarassed sys admins at at least 3 "big name" companies who discovered it was a one way alley a little too late.

A more common problem for us little guys is that many of the "backup" methods are bulk jobs, and you can't easily restore just a few files. You have to put the whole batch back, and then throw out what you didn't want. There's often not enough room left to get it all back - unless you back up and remove other stuff to make space, restore the batch, throw away the crap, and then restore the stuff you had to move to restore the stuff... (am I going in circles here?)

I find CDs about as rational as anything, but I'm still looking for better. A CD file format a little more similar to hard drives would make it a lot easier; but I don't expect the whole industry to change - especially since the standards have been out of print for about n+3 decades now, so nobody really knows how they're supposed to work.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: GUEST,Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Feb 05 - 10:16 AM

I used Ghost successfully and will go ahead and repurchase it. I have a DVD burner now, and Geoff makes a great point--it should save on the work since so much more data can be sent to them. I did several times test Ghost and at least one time did a complete system restore from it. (Thank goodness I had it and had tested it! The first couple of times I tried the system test it I didn't have the correct media drivers installed. Pay very close attention to the restore disks, and overkill on drivers is not a bad thing.)

Here is my version of Write Only Memory. I hope to hell I have a few versions of some of my scholarly papers in this format.

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 25 Feb 05 - 12:48 PM

SRS -

Not true WOM (Write Only Memory). More like W1M (Write ONCE Memory).

All you need is a scanner and good OCR.

(And lots of time and patience to edit the "recognized" stuff.)

John

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Feb 05 - 01:50 PM

Exactly. I use the standard Times New Roman font that is easily recognized by the OCR software. This OCR proofing is a great opportunity to read and edit my work at the same time. Hopefully the character recognition software will overlook occasional tea cup rings/stains. :)

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 25 Feb 05 - 02:07 PM

I think my OCR has more problem with "her" kitties' pawprints than with the coffee stains. Accuracy seems to be inversely proportional to the length of the document scanned. Something like Number of Errors is proportional to the 1.3 power of number of characters.

I have learned that when scanning newspaper clippings it's almost an absolute necessity to put a BLACK backing paper behind the page when you scan, to cut the bleedthrough from the other side; but one of the cats has a taste for my black backup sheets, and keeps chewing on them, so there's never one handy when I need it.

Most printer paper is thick/opaque enough to get a clean scan without backup. I do run into the problem of my OCR trying to read multi-column text as graphics, so I usually Photoshop the scans to single column if it's anything large.

Now is this thread drift?

John

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 25 Feb 05 - 08:42 PM

The original WOM is /dev/null, although technically you CAN TRY to read from it -

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 26 Feb 05 - 10:22 AM

Jon - I'm sure that Liz the Squeak could find a good use for a chocolate fireguard....
:0)
Quack!
Geoff.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 26 Feb 05 - 01:08 PM

Geoff, to get back to the original question you asked, how is your system working? And what are you finding with the DVD backup possibilities?

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Amos
Date: 26 Feb 05 - 01:21 PM

It may be legend but I read a story of an engineer who actually added WOM units to his company's product catalogue with a price and specifications. He got several serious enquiries, according to the tale.

Go figger!!


A

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 26 Feb 05 - 01:31 PM

I've been very busy this week and have not had time to start messing about with computers so am not much further on than a week back.
I was just re-reading the whole of this thread to check that I haven't missed any important comments before I try to move onto next phase.
I just spotted a possible workaround for the Drive Letter shifting. The help article Blickied by Nutty says that if you partition Hard Drive number two but make the partition an "Extended Partition" (whatever that is), then apparently Windows will not give it a "Drive leter" of its own. I haven't yet tried to find if I can do this.
I'll keep the questions and solutions updated.
Quack!
Geoff.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 26 Feb 05 - 08:37 PM

In order to Boot (DOS/Windoze) - you need a Primary Partition - it can only have 1 drive letter. An Extended Partition is the other type that DOS/Windoze recognises - it can have multiple 'partitions' inside it - each of which will be given a separate drive letter.

The disadvantage of having no primary partition on your second drive is that if the first drive goes belly up, you can;t get running quickly by using the second drive without mucking about with it to give it a primary partition which you can make bootable.

For me the 'disadvantage' of having D drive on the second had drive is greatly outweighed by the ease of future potential 'disaster proofing'.

Robin

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 26 Feb 05 - 11:37 PM

You need to be sure that any partitions are well-thought-out. A partition may have a drive letter but not be "recognized" by Windows because it is too far out to be used for booting the computer. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist, it just means that it doesn't have the full functionality of a drive positioned better on the disk.

I haven't looked at the partitions on this new computer of mine yet, though I can tell that HP has set it up so the recovery information is on the "D" drive on the hard drive. As you say, it has been a busy week. Time to check out partitions will come along later.

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 27 Feb 05 - 02:03 AM

Most of the format and partition info in Microsoft documentation was written for Win95, Win98, and WinME, with a few articles specifically to try to get Win2K people to give up the old ways and get with NTFS. Win2K and later have "wizards" that do things the way you're supposed to, so you only need documentation if you find a need to "bend the rules."

Articles that I've pulled recently that may be helpful:

MS-DOS Partitioning Summary: Article ID 69912 a rather old article that gives a summary of what partition types can be used with various DOS versions, through Win98.

A linked article, Order in Which MS-DOS Assigns Drive Letters: Article ID 51978 may be helpful. Should be good through WinME.

Overview of FAT, HPFS, and NTFS File Systems: Article ID 100108 gives a brief summary of the formats that can be used with various Windows and NT versions.

Description of Default Cluster Sizes for FAT32 File System: Article ID 192322 gives a little more specific info for just FAT32.

Description of the FAT32 File System: Article ID 154997 gives more info on the FAT32 format. Applies to Win versions through WinME.

Common Questions About the FAT32 File System : Article ID 253774 gives answers to a few questions about the FAT32 format, applicable to Win versions through WinME.

Default Cluster Size for FAT and NTFS: Article ID 140365 gives information you need it you plan to repartition. Choosing an appropriate cluster size is an essential step in getting the partition size you expect. (Note that a strict reading of applicability would limit this document to use with Win2K, NT and Server 2003 versions.)


Dynamic vs. Basic Storage in Windows 2000: Article ID 175761 written for Win2K, but the same principles apply to WinXP and to most server versions.

Hard Disk Limited to 8-GB Partition: Article ID 153550 info on the partition size limit for early Win95, Win98, and WinME. May help if there's a question about what sizes you can use.

How to Use the Fdisk Tool and the Format Tool to Partition or Repartition a Hard Disk: Article ID 255867 is a long article with lots of stuff in it, but strictly applicable to WinME and earlier.

Maximum Partition Size Using FAT16 File System: Article ID : 118335 the article that states that WinME and earlier can format a partition (4GB) that's larger than they can use(2GB). Note that this specific limit may not apply for OEM version of the OS, and/or for updated versions with suitable BIOS.

This is just scratching the surface of what's available. The only problem is figuring out how to get to what you need. Maybe the way they've phrased the title will suggest something useful to someone.

One extra, for Nostalgia Nuts: The Four Steps Needed to Make a Hard Disk Usable: Article ID : 66706 applicable to "XT or AT computers running MS-DOS."

John

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: GUEST,Stilly River Sage
Date: 27 Feb 05 - 10:34 AM

Another one of John's "terse" contributions to Mudcat. The post counter should count keystrokes instead of messages and you'd shoot way up that list! :)

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 28 Feb 05 - 01:56 AM

Ahh JiK - that last link brings back memories (pardon the pun!), but what about HD 'skew-factor' interleaves eh? ;-)

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 28 Feb 05 - 04:28 AM

Foolestroupe -

I can remember spending 10 hours per day for 3 days in a row trying to get an optimum interleave on my 30 MB hard drive. Now I've got several individual Word documents bigger than that.

Gibson's SpinRite was an essential tool too. It took about 3 months for the heads to bend enough to start missing bits. Being able to "reformat" (actually just "re-track") without moving the data saved millions of floppies.

I still remember the first time I saw the specs on the first "brand new" hard drive that used MFM-RLL and wasn't a scuzzy.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 03:16 PM

Have you seen this new thing in XP Pro called "Data Execution Prevention"? This is the blurb I come up with when I click on a link to learn more:

Data Execution Prevention (DEP) helps prevent damage from viruses and other security threats that attack by running (executing) malicious code from memory locations that only Windows and other programs should use. This type of threat causes damage by taking over one or more memory locations in use by a program. Then it spreads and harms other programs, files, and even your e-mail contacts.

Unlike a firewall or antivirus program, DEP does not help prevent harmful programs from being installed on your computer. Instead, it monitors your programs to determine if they use system memory safely. To do this, DEP software works alone or with compatible microprocessors to mark some memory locations as "non-executable". If a program tries to run code—malicious or not—from a protected location, DEP closes the program and notifies you.

DEP can take advantage of software and hardware support. To use DEP, your computer must be running Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) or later, or Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 or later. DEP software alone helps protect against certain types of malicious code attacks but to take full advantage of the protection that DEP can offer, your processor must support "execution protection". This is a hardware-based technology designed to mark memory locations as non-executable. If your processor does not support hardware-based DEP, it's a good idea to upgrade to a processor that offers execution protection features.

I'm working with a new computer and I'm trying to put files on my hard drive from disks. I am moving some of the folders around as I rethink how I want to organize them. But every time I click on an important sub-folder in "My Documents" in Windows Explorer, it crashes, simply going away, or giving me an error message and saying it wants to report back to the MotherShip (And you thought it only meant MickySoft!)

A note at the bottom states By default, DEP is only turned on for essential Windows operating system programs and services. To help protect more programs with DEP, select Turn on DEP for all programs and services except those I select.

When I follow the directions to get to the settings for this feature, the only program on the list is Windows Explorer. There are two radio buttons. By default the first is selected and it says "Turn on DEP for essential Windows programs and services only." Below it is the choice "Turn on DEP for all programs and services except those I select:" and when it is toggled, Windows Explorer is the only program in the box, though I can add and remove programs. In a kind of reverse logic, I'm afraid that if I check the Windows Explorer box that I'll be blocked from everything else. I think perhaps I need to go to the bottom and "Remove" Windows Explorer from the list. Hmmm.

I guess this means that if I add other stuff and don't check it, it won't be affected. So Windows Explorer is the only over-arching program initially set up for Data Execution Prevention. I wonder if there is a way to fine tune this? For now I need to turn this off. At least for now. It is blocking my ability to work with my files and folders.

What compelling reasons for using or not using this have any of you come across? As it is, the program is essentially denying me the easy access to folders or directories on the drive, but I haven't found a protocol-driven way to work with them.

Any thoughts? John?

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 07:20 PM

SRS - slight delay. I had to look this one up again.

Microsoft Windows XP Embedded: Data Execution Prevention from the Microsoft Developers Network Library, doesn't give much more than a definition, but has links to how you can "embed" the feature into programs you write. What's significant at this point is that it does offer the alternate terminology "NX" – for non-execute. The feature can be done in software if you don't have an enabled processor. This may be the one you already quoted?

The article appears under MSDN "Best Practices for Security," subtopic "Local Security Considerations."

The error is unlikely to be coming from Win Explorer, but another process – probably from an installed program – can cause an error in a "Windows essential process" like WinExplorer. If you are only doing file transfers, and don't have another program active, it's most likely to be caused by something that loads out of Start or Startup. It could possibly be caused by an AV or AS program, or a cookie blocker that isn't aware of the "new" malloc (pardon - memory allocation) requirements for systems using NX.

If you're doing massive transfers it's possible that your computer is trying to use NX memory pages for temps, and hits a clinker when an executable file is copied into a disallowed part of memory. I don't have enough info to tell whether just copying an executable without opening it is a possible trigger. Some AV programs attempt to scan any files that you move, particularly if the move is from one drive to another.

Data Execution Prevention is another MSDN article that gives more of a basic "theory of DEP/NX," but probably isn't too helpful to anyone not writing code.

It shouldn't take a lot of "code smarts" to see why older programs can run into problems with this system, from what's in this last article; but it's not something you really need to know to work the fix. When you find out what program is causing the problem, this might be the one to refer the builder to when he says he doesn't know what you're talking about.

CHECK THIS ONE:

You receive a "Data Execution Prevention" error message in Windows XP Service Pack 2 or in Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 is a little more helpful. It gives a step-by-step procedure for a workaround, but says you really should "contact the program builder for an update."

This last article gives some info on what you can do and what you can't in each of the DEP modes. My guess is that you haven't found/gotten to the right mode to apply the setting you want, or you haven't identified the right program to add to the exceptions list. Unfortunately, if you have, or if you do, get into the right mode, you probably still will have to figure out what program/process is the trigger in order to work around it. It's fairly safe to bet that Windows Explorer is NOT the process that causes the problem. WinExp just dies because something else ate part of its brain.

If you can't identify the program that's causing the error message, about the only way I can think of for finding it would be to uninstall suspects one at a time and see if the problem goes away. There probably is a better way, but …

You receive a Stop error when a driver is not compatible with the Data Execution Prevention (DEP) feature in Windows XP Service Pack 2 or in Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 offers another source for DEP error – a driver – but the error message looks different than what you've described. This article does tell you how you can turn off DEP/NX protection completely; but you should consider that a "last resort."

You cannot install Paint Shop Pro 8 in Windows XP Service Pack 2 or in Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 indicates that PSP8 is not compatible with DEP. If that's one of the programs you have installed, it goes high on the suspect list. Note that "you cannot install" means that the installation fails, not necessarily that the program can't run. There is a workaround using a modified install method for this program. "Installers" generally seem to have problems here.

Programs that are known to experience a loss of functionality when they run on a Windows XP Service Pack 2-based computer gives some specific programs, and links to some others and/or fixes. Note that this list includes programs that may fail for reasons other than DEP. Also note that there are several AV programs on the list, and several programs whose Installers and UnInstallers fail.

More Background:

A detailed description of the Data Execution Prevention (DEP) feature in Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005. This gives a less-geek explanation. Consider it "nice to know later" for now. I don't think it gives any specific solutions, but some of our more nerdy folk may be interested in a quick look to see what's being talked up.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 07:25 PM

An afterthought:

The error message should name the program that violated the NX protection. In most cases it will close the program automatically. The program that's the cause of it all - even after it's closed - may leave "damage" in RAM pages that can cause a Windows process (WinExplorer?) to fail later and be reported as in violation of DEP.

Maybe....

John

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 08:08 PM

I now run AMS Fast Defrag Freeware - it's a memory tool - and have fewer problems now in 98SE - there's a Pro paid version too

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 10:35 PM

I scribbled a few letters that looked like a file, but I have a question mark next to them, so I'll get the entire message next time I see it.

I can narrow this down--I use Win Explorer a lot, and I do a lot of right-clicking as I work to look at the properties of folders. In this latest XP Pro version on this computer it doesn't seem to like right-clicking in this venue. Win Explorer closes immediately if I right-click on the folder I want to see more of. I will pay more attention and report back. And perhaps I need to get out of the habit of right-clicking in this program.

Thanks for taking the trouble to track those sources down--I'll read a few of those tomorrow and report back.

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 02 Mar 05 - 03:37 AM

Oh Geoff, you know me so well....

We invested in an external hard drive thingy. We downloaded all the memory from the old computer, isolated it, debugged it, and have managed to reload about 99.9% of everything back onto the new computer. Of about 400 pictures, I reckon I lost about 5, which is a pretty good ratio considering we nearly lost the whole damn lot.

This time, I'm going to put a whole heap of stuff onto CDRoms so that at least I have another copy if the worst should happen again.

All I can say is.... RTFM! Read The F(!&ing Manual! If a programme says it isn't compatable with Microsoft - IT PROBABLY ISN'T!

Our problems were caused by Manitas trying to download a programme for a digital video camera. We've got some rules now....

1. Be extra careful when loading new programmes.

2. Always keep a backup.

3. Do some housekeeping at least once a month, if not every week!

LTS

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 02 Mar 05 - 08:09 AM

Data Execution Protection?
Excuse me for being suspicious, but it sounds so much like standard microsoft Commercial Sabotage to me.
I seem to recall the scenario running a bit like this...

1) Take some popular programmes which people use instead of paying a fortune for some bloated Microsoft programme which does a considerably poorer job.
2) Find something in Windoze OS which the programme needs to run.
3) Deliberately alter the next update / patch to disable this feature and henceforth cripple the competition, leaving your computer user with no option other than to
4) Buy and install the inferior Microsoft programme.

The US High Courts took action against the one to cripple Netscape a few years back, but plenty of others seem to have slipped through the net.
Qack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 02 Mar 05 - 08:15 AM

Data Execution Protection can be worked in more than one way...

1) Build the OS correctly in the first place so it doesn't allow buffer overruns etc Bill didn't want to do that...

2) Build the Apps correctly etc....

3) tack on some crap afterwards which will most likely have hole in it anyway and slow things down, and cripple pre-existing stuff...

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 02 Mar 05 - 08:22 AM

SRS -

I haven't noticed a problem with right-clicking in WinExplorer. There is a "general" setup that allows you to single-click to open, and that setting could have a real effect on Explorer. I don't use it, since it interferes with being able to edit filenames just by clicking on them in Explorer. In Explorer, Tools, Folder Options, General Tab, select either "open on single click" or "click to select, double-click to open."

If you turn off the "open on single click," you can click on a file to select it, click (left) again on the filename to open the filename for editing, change the filename, click anywhere else or hit enter to close the edit. (This may still work in Explorer with the single-click setting, but I haven't tried it.)

I don't know if it still works with single-click opening set, but I use the method for "Save As" a lot in several programs. If you click on the last file you saved (while the filename box is selected), that name is copied into the save-as filename box. Click the box again to reselect and open the name for edit, click once more to set the cursor location in the name, change the last digit to the next number, and enter. Gives you an ordered set of files without having to type the whole name for each one. It works great when I've scanned 50 or so unnamed files into my Twain and need to rename them all as I save. And I believe it's actually Explorer that displays the names in the "Save" or "Save As" boxes in most Win programs.

Even if you have the "single click to open" set up, a failure of Explorer to distinguish left click and right click - could be what's happening? - might suggest a mouse driver that needs an update to WinXP SR2 compatible? A lot of "WinXP compatible" drivers may need a tweak to be "WinXP SR2 compatible."

John

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: GUEST,Stilly River Sage
Date: 02 Mar 05 - 11:38 AM

John,

I do the same thing when it comes to numbering and using the name box. I right click to get at menu information for changing file names and such, and when I encountered this problem I was working on arranging some folders in a hierarchy. But you probably know how it goes--you do something so often that you don't even think about what you're doing--you think "I want to look at something" and your hand just clicks, without your thinking "I need to mouse over a file name and right click once or twice." So I have to watch what it was I was doing. As long as I carefully did a single left click it was cooperating. I'll emulate the problem again later and write down the code. It's something I want to keep track of, because I'm sure I'll run into it again somewhere else.

Liz, part of the problem with losing my expansion space (my old HP Pavilion had tons of space, the new one is already full, now that I've added a floppy) was solved by picking up an external hard drive enclosure. I'm not sure what the insurance folks are going to say about this, but it accomplishes what I wanted with the tall case on my old computer. The way to put a hard drive into use that isn't the same one as my external free-standing hard drive. It works out functionally about the same, but this can (at this time) hold a much larger disk drive for a lot less money (in other words, I could get two of these and use one as my external backup drive and one as my expansion room but that's not the setup I had before so the insurance folks probably wouldn't pay for it).

What you could have done with something like this is take the old hard drive out of the first computer, plug it into the HD enclosure, and run it like a slave drive. It would cut out one step. If they ever find my other computer, I'll take that hard drive, plug it into this box, and transfer all of my important files.

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 02 Mar 05 - 03:11 PM

SRS -

For looking at properties, you need to right click on the file name and then click on Properties.

If you left click once, it should "select" the file. If you left click again, it should open the filename so that you can type a new name or edit the existing one. The end result is the same, regardless of which way you do it. The background, usually blue, that shows the file is selected "shrinks in" to show that the filename is editable.

Click the icon for the file, hit Enter, or just click on another file, and the "edit" should close. It's a lot faster than right click - select rename. The only hazard is that if your double-click speed is set too slow the second click may look like the second half of a double-click and you end up opening the file.

You can also use the "filename edit" feature for record keeping since you can COPY (Ctl-C) the filename when it's open for edit, to past the exact long filename in use somewhere, as in a document or log. When I paste a picture in a document, I often like to paste the filename with it, and copying the filename directly from Explorer avoids a lot of typos.

You can also use Paste (Ctl-P) to put a new filename on a file, if the filename is opened for edit.

This "slow two-click edit" actually should work in anything from Win3.11 on.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 02 Mar 05 - 03:21 PM

Oops.

"You can also use Paste (Ctl-V) to put a new filename on a file..."

(I didn't have anyplace to copy from and paste, hence the typo.)

I should note, that above references to "click on a file" mean click on the filename end of the file entry in Explorer. Since clicking on the filename after the file has been selected will open the filename edit function, it's a good idea to practice clicking specifically on the icon at the end of the file entry rather than just "anywhere close" if you really mean just to select that file. Clicking twice on the icon doesn't do much of anything, unless it's quick enough to look like a double-click.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 02 Mar 05 - 11:13 PM

John, I'm an old pro at using the right click and cut and paste looking at properties and such. But it hasn't been working in Windows Explorer, it has been crashing instead. That was the point I was trying to make, and why I asked if anyone else had encountered this. The information the system gave me said that it was protecting the system with Data Execution Protection.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 03 Mar 05 - 04:15 AM

SRS -

Recent Windows versions allow a choice of several "modes," and it's possible one or more of them may do things differently than I'm used to. I assume you're using "classic view"(?).

WinExplorer should be one of the "systems" that's good to go with the DEP; but at least one of the articles I looked at indicated that another program - that gets closed when it violates DEP - may leave mangled memory pages that will make it look later like Explorer caused a violation. It should be in one of those that I put up links for 01 Mar 05 - 07:20 PM, but I don't recall offhand which one.

The suspicion would be that that's what you're seeing.

If you can get a reading on one of the first error messages after a reboot and identify an "other program," uninstalling it, or getting an update for it, are likely to be the most productive things to do. Several fairly common AV programs are mentioned in the list of "incompatibles" although they're not specific in the list about which ones are incompatible due to DEP.

You can turn off DEP, and one of the articles gives instructions for doing it. I would expect that you'd rather find the problem and fix it, so you can leave DEP on though.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 03 Mar 05 - 02:00 PM

This weekend I think I'll be reading some of those articles and contemplating the "fix." It's a busy week, and these kinds of things aren't done easily on the fly. But I'd rather be out digging up my veggie garden. :-/

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 27 Jun 09 - 11:48 AM

I'll bring this thread back because in this instance I'm trying to get rid of a partition on a thumb drive. It's one that has it's own software and launches it every time it is plugged in. I've removed a lot of this stuff, but am down to having two partitions on this 4 gig drive and I want to merge them and remove the read-only zip file that the Cruzer folks put in place. I get a message saying I can't delete it and Partition Magic doesn't notice this drive when I start it up. It sees my internal and two external hard drives. I can't find a way to bring this thumb drive to it's attention, but I'd like to use a program that will just crunch the Cruzer files then merge the partitions.

Anyone else have to dumb down an uppity thumb drive? What worked?

Thanks!

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Greg F.
Date: 28 Jun 09 - 10:19 AM

What's worked for me (after being in a similar situation) is buying thumb drives from some of the better manufacturers that don't put any of that crap on 'em in the first place.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 28 Jun 09 - 10:43 AM

This came from Dell.

Subject: RE: Tech: lost hard drive ?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 28 Jun 09 - 11:13 AM

The software on the disk will turn itself off from "autorun" and supposedly will remove itself from the device, but that doesn't seem to be working.