What the hell??? (HDD partitioning)

I have an old 17 year old computer running Win98se. I have a bootable
120gb drive for C: with 3 more partitions. C: thru F:. That works fine.

Recently I replaced my slave drive, with a Western Digital 160gb drive.
That drive was setup with Fdisk, set for Extended partition at 100% of
drive, with three Logical partitions set as 38% 28% and 34%. The drive
works fine. I can access it with no problems from Windows98 or from Dos.

I just got another drive. Also a Western Digital 160gb. I just bought
this for future expansion, but I wanted to test it to make sure it
works. I did the same process with Fdisk, set to 100% Extended, and put
the logical partitions at 33% each (one is 34%). All worked fine, until
I tried to format these partitions from Dos. Dos said "Invalid
partition". I loaded Windows, and Partition Magic. Using P.M. I
formatted the 3 partitions with no problem.

Windows shows each partition correctly. But when I boot to Dos, I can
not even see the partitions. Once again, I get an error message saying
"Invalid Partition".

WHAT THE HELL?


Both drives Western Digital 160gb. Both are IDE and have the jumper set
for SLAVE. Everything is formatted for Fat32. Same data cable and plug
used on both drives (obviously not at the same time). Aside from a
slight variance in logical partition size, they are nearly set up
identical.

The first drive (that works) is model WD1600SB (Caviar)

The second one (causing the problem) is model WD1600AVJB
(so they are not exactly the same).

This problem makes no sense to me at all.....

On Tue, 24 Oct 2017 06:06:35 -0500, wrote:

This problem makes no sense to me at all.....

All else being equal -- that two different drives -- even if model
numbers aren't the same, regardless of same BIOS/Computer/Software and
procedures, such that one drive reports Invalid Partition.

First ran across that with solid state drives. Two Samsung SSDs, a
64G and 128G, formatted out and lent themselves to successful
placement.

Much the same as you report. Rather, principally that would have been
DOS and FAT32. And then I purchased a CORSAIR 256G SSD, which did not.
Partition Magic was also one of the variables, among several from all
types of HDD format programs I'd used, ranging across a wide range of
publication/release dates from pre-W98 onwards.

More specifically, I'd gotten past where you are, where I was having a
specific problem with two software elements: 1) A rather old *NIX Boot
Arbitrator, and within a conjunction to 2) having made a boot
partition, subsequently to have my BIOS reject the system files for a
No Boot Disc Present error.

Eventually it proved to be a secret combination of the HDD formatter,
perhaps indeed it was Partition Magic, which initially created the
successful partition, in turn allowing me to transfer system files
for FAT32 simple DOS boot. My Boot Arbitrator would have been next,
at the usual stage for its indicated install, unless the Boot
Arbitrator subsequently produced a No Boot Disc Present error.

This was a few years back, although I am still booting from that
Crucial SDD now.

I mention it because there are obviously more variables present:
software format utilities, the actual hard drives, as to how the BIOS
implements seeming irregularities -- no doubt less favorably weighed
when using an older class of software.

It was matter of plugging away, for me, hammering at the Crucial SDD
drive, until I eventually passed a software combination through it. A
problem I did not even remotely encounter with either Samsung drive.

Crucial, as think back to recall, seems to have reflected generally --
the vague reference: "Problems? then goto fetch" -- from one of the
two or three major semi-commercial, aka pseudo-freeware
formatting/partitioning utilities published now (ACRONIS, AOEMI,
EASEUS and such. No doubt then intended to squash and lay it low,
unto and down upon the floor -- to bow from the ankles upwards -- if
but for excepting the latest endowed Windows 10 machines with suitable
HTML5 browsers.)

To sum: To buy into plug-in standards for a hard drives, now-a-days,
ain't necessarily what it used to be. Not even if lies are told to
you until they're blue in the face, you're still likely to be "out
there" scratching you head, if not quite pulling out fistful's of
hair, attempting to make the "MaJiK ConJuncZion" between the right
software for partitioning a drive, successfully for bringing it
through the BIOS recognition stage.

Plan to bring your own lunch, perhaps a blanket and basket for a
picnic;- you may be awhile at it. Perhaps you'll be so kind to join
me. We can sit awhile to discuss all about why I wouldn't likely be in
a position, not as near readily to drop a bundle of money in Crucial's
lap, when a certain, although somewhat older 500G mechanical drive is
likely, sometime in the near future, to be replaced with another 500G
SSD counterpart. ...If but hardly more than an interim to pause and
reflect upon an enjoyable panorama surrounding us -- the interlocution
accompanying studded moments of poignant silence -- punctuated by
millions of Android users furtively glancing up from isolationist
screens, like busy gophers at cheap potshots Facebook limits to 120
characters.

On Tue, 24 Oct 2017 06:06:35 -0500, wrote:

| I have an old 17 year old computer running Win98se. I have a bootable
| 120gb drive for C: with 3 more partitions. C: thru F:. That works fine.
|
| Recently I replaced my slave drive, with a Western Digital 160gb drive.
| That drive was setup with Fdisk, set for Extended partition at 100% of
| drive, with three Logical partitions set as 38% 28% and 34%. The drive
| works fine. I can access it with no problems from Windows98 or from Dos.
|
| I just got another drive. Also a Western Digital 160gb. I just bought
| this for future expansion, but I wanted to test it to make sure it
| works. I did the same process with Fdisk, set to 100% Extended, and put
| the logical partitions at 33% each (one is 34%). All worked fine, until
| I tried to format these partitions from Dos. Dos said "Invalid
| partition". I loaded Windows, and Partition Magic. Using P.M. I
| formatted the 3 partitions with no problem.
|
| Windows shows each partition correctly. But when I boot to Dos, I can
| not even see the partitions. Once again, I get an error message saying
| "Invalid Partition".

Strange. I never had any problem setting up 1 primary and 2 logical partitions on
the same HDD. The difference is I don't use Fdisk, but a 3rd party program such as
MiniTool Partition Wizard (free version).

Larc

On 24/10/2017 7:06 PM, wrote:
I just got another drive. Also a Western Digital 160gb. I just bought
this for future expansion, but I wanted to test it to make sure it
works. I did the same process with Fdisk, set to 100% Extended, and put
the logical partitions at 33% each (one is 34%). All worked fine, until
I tried to format these partitions from Dos. Dos said "Invalid
partition". I loaded Windows, and Partition Magic. Using P.M. I
formatted the 3 partitions with no problem.

Did you specify the wrong partition type?

You didn't format them as NTFS partitions, did you? And you want FAT32
partitions?

"WD1600AVJB"... "AVJB" are drives not intended for desktop computers,
but possibly for CCTV systems. You might need to nuke the first 1024
bytes and redo the partitions? And you better run a full scan after
formatting it to avoid disk errors.

--
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/( _ )\ May the Force and farces be with you!
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On 24/10/2017 7:06 PM, wrote:
Both drives Western Digital 160gb. Both are IDE and have the jumper set
for SLAVE. Everything is formatted for Fat32. Same data cable and plug
used on both drives (obviously not at the same time). Aside from a
slight variance in logical partition size, they are nearly set up
identical.

What if you try the MASTER position? Are all jumpers set correctly?

--
@~@ Remain silent! Drink, Blink, Stretch! Live long and prosper!!
/ v \ Simplicity is Beauty!
/( _ )\ May the Force and farces be with you!
^ ^ (x86_64 Ubuntu 9.10) Linux 2.6.39.3
�借貸! ��騙! ��交! �打交! �打劫! �自殺! 請考慮綜� (CSSA):
http://www.swd.gov.hk/tc/index/site_...sub_addressesa

On 24/10/2017 9:56 PM, Mr. Man-wai Chang wrote:
On 24/10/2017 7:06 PM, wrote:
Both drives Western Digital 160gb. Both are IDE and have the jumper set
for SLAVE. Everything is formatted for Fat32. Same data cable and plug
used on both drives (obviously not at the same time). Aside from a
slight variance in logical partition size, they are nearly set up
identical.

What if you try the MASTER position? Are all jumpers set correctly?


And the IDE cable? What if you swapped them?

--
@~@ Remain silent! Drink, Blink, Stretch! Live long and prosper!!
/ v \ Simplicity is Beauty!
/( _ )\ May the Force and farces be with you!
^ ^ (x86_64 Ubuntu 9.10) Linux 2.6.39.3
�借貸! ��騙! ��交! �打交! �打劫! �自殺! 請考慮綜� (CSSA):
http://www.swd.gov.hk/tc/index/site_...sub_addressesa

wrote:
I have an old 17 year old computer running Win98se. I have a bootable
120gb drive for C: with 3 more partitions. C: thru F:. That works fine.

Recently I replaced my slave drive, with a Western Digital 160gb drive.
That drive was setup with Fdisk, set for Extended partition at 100% of
drive, with three Logical partitions set as 38% 28% and 34%. The drive
works fine. I can access it with no problems from Windows98 or from Dos.

I just got another drive. Also a Western Digital 160gb. I just bought
this for future expansion, but I wanted to test it to make sure it
works. I did the same process with Fdisk, set to 100% Extended, and put
the logical partitions at 33% each (one is 34%). All worked fine, until
I tried to format these partitions from Dos. Dos said "Invalid
partition". I loaded Windows, and Partition Magic. Using P.M. I
formatted the 3 partitions with no problem.

Windows shows each partition correctly. But when I boot to Dos, I can
not even see the partitions. Once again, I get an error message saying
"Invalid Partition".

WHAT THE HELL?


Both drives Western Digital 160gb. Both are IDE and have the jumper set
for SLAVE. Everything is formatted for Fat32. Same data cable and plug
used on both drives (obviously not at the same time). Aside from a
slight variance in logical partition size, they are nearly set up
identical.

The first drive (that works) is model WD1600SB (Caviar)

The second one (causing the problem) is model WD1600AVJB
(so they are not exactly the same).

This problem makes no sense to me at all.....

It's hard to remember all the capacity rules now.

One thing I'd watch for, is whether the controller supports
48bit LBA. That started to get support around year 2003 or so.

IDE 28bit LBA 128GiB/137GB
IDE 48bit LBA much larger drives (750GB IDE HDD were the largest made)

A Promise Ultra133 card could do 48 bit LBA, and support
a drive larger than 137GB. Your drive is 160GB, and that
suggests if you're not careful, you could have a corruption
problem. An Ultra100 can do that too, with the right firmware
flashed into it.

The end of the article here, makes mention of the size issue.
Someone apparently made a hacked driver to handle larger drives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_98

If you attempted to do writes past 137GB on a 28bit LBA
setup, it could overwrite sector0 (address rollover). On
Win2K, the OS would fix this for you, by only showing drive
space within the "allowed range". Partitioning and formatting
a drive on a more-capable OS, then bringing the drive
to a less-capable OS, could result in the drive data being
corrupted.

It caused me to limit my stock of hard drives.
My IDE drives go 40GB, 60GB, 80GB, 120GB, 250GB.
I held off on anything over 120GB for the longest
while, until either Win2K SP4 or WinXP SP3 era.
I never got any IDE over 250GB (they go to 750GB).

My policy was to "test" a newly partitioned and
formatted drive, by writing large files to it,
until it was full. If it corrupted at the "magic mark",
then I knew I had a 28bit LBA problem.

Paul

On Tue, 24 Oct 2017 10:08:33 -0400, Paul wrote:


It's hard to remember all the capacity rules now.

One thing I'd watch for, is whether the controller supports
48bit LBA. That started to get support around year 2003 or so.

IDE 28bit LBA 128GiB/137GB
IDE 48bit LBA much larger drives (750GB IDE HDD were the largest made)

A Promise Ultra133 card could do 48 bit LBA, and support
a drive larger than 137GB. Your drive is 160GB, and that
suggests if you're not careful, you could have a corruption
problem. An Ultra100 can do that too, with the right firmware
flashed into it.

The end of the article here, makes mention of the size issue.
Someone apparently made a hacked driver to handle larger drives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_98

If you attempted to do writes past 137GB on a 28bit LBA
setup, it could overwrite sector0 (address rollover). On
Win2K, the OS would fix this for you, by only showing drive
space within the "allowed range". Partitioning and formatting
a drive on a more-capable OS, then bringing the drive
to a less-capable OS, could result in the drive data being
corrupted.

It caused me to limit my stock of hard drives.
My IDE drives go 40GB, 60GB, 80GB, 120GB, 250GB.
I held off on anything over 120GB for the longest
while, until either Win2K SP4 or WinXP SP3 era.
I never got any IDE over 250GB (they go to 750GB).

My policy was to "test" a newly partitioned and
formatted drive, by writing large files to it,
until it was full. If it corrupted at the "magic mark",
then I knew I had a 28bit LBA problem.

Paul

Thanks to all who replied.
This turned out real weird, but I got it working. I decided to start
over. I loaded Partition Magic (PM), and removed the three logical
partitions. I then tried to remove the Extended partition using PM and
there was no option to do that. It just did not even show up as an
extended partition in PM.

After rebooting to Dos, I used Fdisk again, and with Fdisk, I removed
the extended partition. At that point, Fdisk showed no partitions
existed in this drive of any sort.

I loaded Win98 and PM. PM only gave me two options for this drive.
Either create a Primary, or a Logical partition. With this being a slave
drive, I did not want it to be Primary. I chose "logical", and I made
two logical partitions, each about half the drive space (about 65gb). PM
created these two Logical partitions, (WITHOUT ANY EXTENDED PARTITION).
I forrmatted them to Fat32, and they work fine. Both in Win98 and from
Dos.

I ran Scandisk on both partitions, and it said "no errors". I copied
some folders from my C: partition to both these new partitions, and then
deleted them, and everything appears to be working fine.

This leaves me rather stumped. Fdisk apparently could not handle this
particular drive, but PM did fine with it. Except for one thing. I have
never created Logical partitions, without first making an extended
partition. So, how this works, makes little sense to me. PM did not even
give me the choice to create an extended partition.

I dont know if it matters, but this is a USED drive, bought from Ebay. I
bought this, because ebay only sells these smaller capacity drives as
USED, or those so called "white label" drives. I quickly learned that
those "white label" drives are no good, or at least the one I bought was
no good. I bought a 120gb white label drive, clearly labeled 120gb, but
it turned out to be a 40gb drive. The seller gave me a refund, and did
not want the bad drive returned. So, I guess I have a fairly worthless
40gb drive claiming to be a 120gb on the label. I've had better luck
with used drives, so I bought these two 160gb drives, (from different
sellers), for little money. The one I was already using worked fine, but
this one is just plain weird.

I am wondering if some sort of software was used with this drive, which
modified the drive in some way? I know all the major HDD companies have
their own software to use to make their drives compatible with older
systems, and so on.....

This has me puzzled. All I know, is that I now have a usable drive, with
two logical partitions, and no extended partition. That is totally
contrary to everything I ever learned about setting up partitions on
drives.

I now wonder what would happen if I made this into a Primary drive, or
if I changed the jumper from SLAVE to CABLE SELECT ?????
At this point, I dont know if I want to mess with it anymore, since it
seems to be working fine as-is, and like I said, this drive is not
intended to be used at the moment. I just bought an extra one because
the price was good, but as always I wanted to test it to make sure I had
a good drive.