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Problem Upgrading HDD on Presario M700



 
 
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  #11  
Old February 12th 05, 11:37 PM
Maria Ripanykhazova
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Well I think I am getting somewhe I put the drive into a desktop and
formatted it using Partition Manager. It WAS true that the XP installation
process couldnt find a drive to format by itself, which is a bit surprising.

It then goes easily into the M700 (on which as I say I have successfully
installed XP before as an exercise in seeing whether another drive was
working: I should have held on to that drive!!) and XP installs easily but
the whole process stops at first reboot with the message NTLDR is missing

Apparently (googling it) this means that you have to boot off a Windows 98
floppy (!) and do a SYS C: Amazingly this is supposed to work on XP
installations (as well as 2000 ones)

But it doesnt on mine, I just receive the error message that SYS cant find a
system in the place where it is supposed to look which is pretty unusual as
XP's installation should only be able to put it in one place! But redoing
this procedure renders no improvement and nor does formatting the FAT32
drive onto which I am doing the install as an NTFS drive. Still the same
error message. But amazingly, booting off a floppy does show that the
install process had put all the proper files in the proper place in the
windows directory. I know that this drive has errors on it but they are
comparatively minuscule and shouldnt effect

Nor does recovery console or the repair MBR or repair BOOT utilities there
help. I have definitely seen that "CAN'T FIND NTLDR" before and wonder what
I can be doing wrong?

I am running out of ideas now and am wondering if the drive is faulty.



  #12  
Old February 12th 05, 11:55 PM
Ben Myers
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Some comments are in order:

1. Toshiba is one of those dim-witted hardware companies who do not see fit to
provide free hard disk diagnostics on their web site. Fortunately, Maxtor
PowerMax is not especially picky.

2. If a hard drive has even one bad sector, continuing to use it is playing with
fire. A single bad sector nowadays is a strong predictor of future drive
failures, either miniscule sector failures or catastrophic crashes.

3. Does the full capacity of the drive show up in the system BIOS setup or when
formatted with the DOS FORMAT command? If not, then there is no simple and easy
workaround for notebook computer with a BIOS that imposes hard drive capacity
limitations.

4. If the drive was previously used on a Mac, I would suggest zeroing out all
the sectors on the drive before attempting any of the steps needed to install
Windows. PowerMax has this feature. Actually, it's only necessary to wipe out
the first sectors on the drive, not the entire drive contents. Mac hard disk
formats are entirely incompatible with Windows, and may be creating confusion
with some part of the installation process... Ben Myers

On Sat, 12 Feb 2005 16:11:50 +0000, Nicholas D Richards
wrote:

In article , Maria Ripanykhazova
news.rnc.com@?.? writes

or the Mac does not work)?
Good point: There generally arent any jumpers on these laptop drives as
they arent designed to be put in with other drives.


I did wonder whether there are any jumpers, the manual for the M700 does
not show any jumper settings.

(this may not be the
case with that side-bay drive on the Armada but I didnt think you could load
an OS on it?)


I assume not, only on the primary drive.

I did put another empty drive unjumpered into the Armada and
it loaded Windows 2000 succesfully so I thought I could load an OS onto an
unformatted drive this easily.


Windows 2000 and XP do include everything required to partition and
format a drive, and my experience has been that they are easy to use.

What is the ex-MAC drive (manufacturer and model/part number)

The drive is a Toshiba 15 gig


I was hoping that you would find a model number. On the Toshiba's they
begin MK followed by 4 digits and then 2 or three alpha characters. It
probably does not matter now.

and running PowerMax.exe (I can't find a
Toshiba test)


Nor could I

shows it passes quick format tests and in the last stages
fails the full advanced format test on some arcane point


I am surprised you got that far; PowerMax is supposed to check that the
drive is a Maxtor or a Quantum drive.


I may try to Partition the drive (Fdisk) on a desktop as you suggest



I meant you to do it in the M700, in the multibay or the primary
position.

I am running out of ideas now and am wondering if the drive is faulty.
The trouble is, replacement parts for laptops are so expensive.

--
Nicholas David Richards -

"Où sont les neiges d'antan?"


  #13  
Old February 13th 05, 04:06 PM
Maria Ripanykhazova
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Ben
Did I not do adequately by completely formatting the drive in Partition
Commander? I admit I did try ignoring the contents and reformatting it and
it was completely formatted FAT32 and is now quick-formatted NTFS: Is there
any possibility that any Apple sectors remain which prevent NTLDR being
either put in the proper place OR being seen on boot? If so what should I do
having formatted it so many times?

I admit, the full format did take hours and numerous bad sectors were
identified but when it was finished, there were only a few tiny parts of the
drive which showed up as being unusable, less than a few megabytes out of a
15 Gig hard drive. That is why I am trying it: I will do a Norton Disc
DOctor on the drive when I have an OS installed and see if it is disastrous,
Then I will take a decision on whether I should replace this drive on a
tertiary-use computer. I certainly dont intend putting anything significant
on it or anything I wouldnt mind losing: This will probably be my living
room computer for surfing the internet while I am watching television, If I
come across a 'favorite' I need to add to a bookmark, I can surely do this
across a network?

3. Does the full capacity of the drive show up in the system BIOS setup or

when
formatted with the DOS FORMAT command? If not, then there is no simple

and easy
workaround for notebook computer with a BIOS that imposes hard drive

capacity
limitations.


I am not sure that an Armada M700 is a BIOS that imposes hard drive
capacity limitations.

4. If the drive was previously used on a Mac, I would suggest zeroing out

all
the sectors on the drive before attempting any of the steps needed to

install
Windows. PowerMax has this feature. Actually, it's only necessary to

wipe out
the first sectors on the drive, not the entire drive contents. Mac hard

disk
formats are entirely incompatible with Windows, and may be creating

confusion
with some part of the installation process... Ben Myers


Do YOU think this is preventing NTLDR being seen on a drive which has been
full-formatted three or four times now, both in FAT32 and NTFS?


  #14  
Old February 23rd 05, 08:18 PM
Maria Ripanykhazova
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Not sure if this constitutes unwarranted trolling but I did manage to get
this whole thing working and an OS installed by formatting the HDD to a size
which seemed to make the C partition smaller than the position where the bad
sectors started on the hard drive: Now everything works fine. It is a 16 gig
drive with only about 10 meg of bad sectors.

PROBLEM: The C parttiion is only 2 gigs.(it is continuuosly reporting
running out of space despite having put the pagesys file and all program
files and data files on the D drive) So I want to expand it into the D
partitoin using Partition Commander which can do this easily (even if it
does entail possibly putting a bad sector on to the C partition)

Does anyone know why the M700 is the only computer I have of all my laptops
and desktops which will not recognise the Partition Commander boot disc as a
boot disc?


 




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