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Nosferat0

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Maxtor DiamondMAX 9 HD sector 0 broken or?

I have an VERY suspicious "Partition Table" error(or something else)!

It all began when I tried to create an partition in Linux.
I have (had) an Windows NTFS formatted partition starting from sector 2.

This is the history:

When I installed Windows I wanted to create an "Primary" partition from sector 1 and 22Gb in size.

I thought that everything went correctly but afterwards in Win enviroment when I where about to delete another Win parition I saw that the "Primary" one (22Gb) wasn't an Primary it was an Extended with an Logical in it.
It caused some problem, I couldn't remove the other Win partition on (6Gb) because it was the active one.

The GUI forbidded me to remove it so I used the console instead, I marked the (22Gb) partition active instead and after that I could remove the (6Gb).
But now when I where about to close the Disk mangement tool it said something "Can't save .......".... I ignored it!

I rebooted the computer with my "Gentoo LiveCD" in the drivebay.

It booted successfully.

In Gentoo install enviroment I started the fdisk tool to create necessary partitions.
I typed something like this:

fdisk /dev/hda
>n
>p (for primary)
>1 (for the number)
> RETURN (default start sector)
And it didn't prompt for how big the partition should be, it should really do that but fdisk didn't!

After some identical tries to create the same partition I saw the problem.....

Because Win had crated an partition at sector 2 and forward Linux automaticly created the new Linux partition at sector 1 or 0 to 2!
And because it is only "1" sector between them then it wasn't necessary to ask for ending sector.

But okey... After an "slurk" coffe I understanded that it was meaningless to try to smass in an partition in the start of the drive.
So I created an new Linux primary partition and entered the start sector manually so it where placed one sector after the first partition.

Something like:

fdisk /dev/hda
>n  (New partition)
>p  (Primary)
>2259 (Start sector)
>+20000M (Ending sector)

And it went smoothly so I :

> w (Save table to disk "I think")

It wrote the partition table without errors,
when I wrote the table to disk I "hadn't" any filesystem mounted from that drive so I shouldn't need to restart the computer to get the new table to work. But when I tried the format the drive to ext3 then some errors about
"******.. :  {SeekRead ....}" I don't remember what it said clearly but something about Seek and read error..!

I rebooted the computer and now the kernel couldn't even get the partition table!
I tried to enter fdisk again (fdisk /dev/hda) but it complained about "Drive not ready..." "{Seek..}" etc.....

And with that long story you now know what the problem is, the disk seems to be dead but it isn't!

I have tried EVERYTHING!

I took the HD to an friend to test it in his computer but it was the same...

I have tested tools like "Maxtor low level formating (PowerMax)" and about 5 other disk mangemant tools.
One tool (R-Studio) was able to read the disk and recover some important files, but all other (even R-studio) complains about "Sector 0" is unreadable.

Please help me!
Iam out of ideas.......

I don't care about the data on the drive, the warranty isn't active longer.... the disk could be broken.. but I don't think so and I don't want to buy an new one as long this one could be working....


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rid
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The only thing I can think of in that situation is to run a "low-level format" or zero-fill several times, using a different character to "fill" with every time. If you're lucky, the problam may go away as the magnetic domains get som exercise... Otherwise the drive is useless.
/RID
Avatar of Nosferat0
Nosferat0

ASKER

Hmm.. ok!

I forgot some revelant info!
When I used the "PowerMAX" utility I got an error code:  de95da6d  .
The application said that I should go to www.maxtor.com and do an RMA with the error code with it.
Because the warranty where out I couldn't do an RMA and there is no place on the net with this error code listed( I have searched tru google in hours.....)!

Someone who know what the code stands for?
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Dr-IP

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