Windows 2000 Stubborn Hard Drive Doesn't Want to Revert to Basic Disk

  • Thread starter Thread starter ey.markov@iname.com
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ey.markov@iname.com

Greetings,

Some time ago I aborted a conversion to dynamic disk in my W2K Pro
machine. I have attached a 250 Gb drive as slave, went into Disk
Management, converted it to dynamic. Then, when I issued the same
command for the first disk, the "Are you sure?" message reminded me of
the drawbacks, so I clicked "No" and reverted disk 2.

Problem is, ever since then disk 2 stubbornly shows as a 128 Gb drive
under Disk Management. DOS tools see it properly, and I was able to
partition it (32, 80, and 130 Gb), but almost every other day Windows
would tell me that the third partition (the one that crosses this
imaginary 128 Gb border) is corrupted, would run CHKDSK on it on
startup, and sometimes fix it, sometimes corrupt all the (test) data
on it beyond recognition.

I thought: "Dynamic disk info is stored in the last 1 Mb of the drive,
right?" Last night I ran Boot and Nuke and had it write zeroes to the
entire disk 2. Booted W2K after that... and what do you know - not
only did the drive show up as 128 Gb, it was once again labeled
"Dynamic"!

If anyone can shed some light on what the heck is going on, I'm sure I
will not be the only one to be enlightened. Thanks!

Yisroel
 
<ey.markov@iname.com> wrote in message
news:ab4ab530-1fe7-4301-9ff2-47fcb0303045@i12g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
> Greetings,
>
> Some time ago I aborted a conversion to dynamic disk in my W2K Pro
> machine. I have attached a 250 Gb drive as slave, went into Disk
> Management, converted it to dynamic. Then, when I issued the same
> command for the first disk, the "Are you sure?" message reminded me of
> the drawbacks, so I clicked "No" and reverted disk 2.
>
> Problem is, ever since then disk 2 stubbornly shows as a 128 Gb drive
> under Disk Management. DOS tools see it properly, and I was able to
> partition it (32, 80, and 130 Gb), but almost every other day Windows
> would tell me that the third partition (the one that crosses this
> imaginary 128 Gb border) is corrupted, would run CHKDSK on it on
> startup, and sometimes fix it, sometimes corrupt all the (test) data
> on it beyond recognition.
>
> I thought: "Dynamic disk info is stored in the last 1 Mb of the drive,
> right?" Last night I ran Boot and Nuke and had it write zeroes to the
> entire disk 2. Booted W2K after that... and what do you know - not
> only did the drive show up as 128 Gb, it was once again labeled
> "Dynamic"!
>
> If anyone can shed some light on what the heck is going on, I'm sure I
> will not be the only one to be enlightened. Thanks!
>
> Yisroel

Does your BIOS support disks larger than 130 GBytes? If
yes then you must enable 48-bit LBA - see here:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kben-us305098

Now convert your disk back to Basic, using the Disk Manager,
then create the partitions you want.
 
On Fri, 18 Jan 2008 09:42:38 -0800 (PST), ey.markov@iname.com wrote:

>Greetings,
>
>Some time ago I aborted a conversion to dynamic disk in my W2K Pro
>machine. I have attached a 250 Gb drive as slave, went into Disk
>Management, converted it to dynamic. Then, when I issued the same
>command for the first disk, the "Are you sure?" message reminded me of
>the drawbacks, so I clicked "No" and reverted disk 2.
>
>Problem is, ever since then disk 2 stubbornly shows as a 128 Gb drive
>under Disk Management. DOS tools see it properly, and I was able to
>partition it (32, 80, and 130 Gb), but almost every other day Windows
>would tell me that the third partition (the one that crosses this
>imaginary 128 Gb border) is corrupted, would run CHKDSK on it on
>startup, and sometimes fix it, sometimes corrupt all the (test) data
>on it beyond recognition.

Whatever DOS tools is, it's using the BIOS to access the disk drive,
so the 48-bit LBA capable BIOS allows full access to the 250GB drive.
The problem is your Windows 2000 installation is not properly
configured to support 48-bit LBA. See
<http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305098>.

>
>I thought: "Dynamic disk info is stored in the last 1 Mb of the drive,
>right?" Last night I ran Boot and Nuke and had it write zeroes to the
>entire disk 2. Booted W2K after that... and what do you know - not
>only did the drive show up as 128 Gb, it was once again labeled
>"Dynamic"!
>
>If anyone can shed some light on what the heck is going on, I'm sure I
>will not be the only one to be enlightened. Thanks!
>
>Yisroel
 
On Jan 18, 8:47 pm, Andy <1...@2.3> wrote:
> On Fri, 18 Jan 2008 09:42:38 -0800 (PST), ey.mar...@iname.com wrote:
> >Greetings,
>
> >Some time ago I aborted a conversion to dynamic disk in my W2K Pro
> >machine. I have attached a 250 Gb drive as slave, went into Disk
> >Management, converted it to dynamic. Then, when I issued the same
> >command for the first disk, the "Are you sure?" message reminded me of
> >the drawbacks, so I clicked "No" and reverted disk 2.
>
> >Problem is, ever since then disk 2 stubbornly shows as a 128 Gb drive
> >under Disk Management. DOS tools see it properly, and I was able to
> >partition it (32, 80, and 130 Gb), but almost every other day Windows
> >would tell me that the third partition (the one that crosses this
> >imaginary 128 Gb border) is corrupted, would run CHKDSK on it on
> >startup, and sometimes fix it, sometimes corrupt all the (test) data
> >on it beyond recognition.
>
> Whatever DOS tools is, it's using the BIOS to access the disk drive,
> so the 48-bit LBA capable BIOS allows full access to the 250GB drive.
> The problem is your Windows 2000 installation is not properly
> configured to support 48-bit LBA. See
> <http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305098>.

Thank you so much! That was it.

And to think that this was a clean install of W2K SP *4* on another
250 GB drive...

Now where do I ask about why the system restarts itself after a soft
shutdown?

Yisroel
 
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