Hey Guys

This is kind of long. But I got to say it all to explain it the best way i can. Its all about locked in files on disk rhat will not format unless you so a full fix disk which will cause me to lose everything because of the drive type im using...


I use to use a (3 point something) Gig Quantum hard drive that came with my computer when i brought it back in1997. Than about 1999 I brought a 20 Gig Quantum. It all did me good because with Win 95 and THE old Partition Magic Program I could format any drive at will. I just move all my files to drive I: and format the empty drive and it came clean at all times no matter what.

But than I acted a fool (not knowing)... I went and brought a Seagate 40 Gig back in the year 2000.

This drive will not give a computer the REAL 40 GIG's if it is put on a Win95 P200 96 Meg Ram....

It was designed for the better computer system.

Anyway, I been stuck with it since than.

Now I got error on ever drive that I created since than......... C: D: E: F: G: L: ....but not H: and J: because i never use except to move stuff from there to here or there.

I can STILL use my computer but I know that i am working with a Disk FULL of ERRORS....

Windows programs don't TOTALLY fix all errors.

I use to have a program that would really, really clean a drive up but I lost it and never payed attention to the name of it back than because this was something that you simply would not use everyday... A once in a live time thing.

Do anyone know of a stand along program that will fix disk errors.... Believe me window and all of it programs really will not work...

With Segates I have to start ALL over again and loss all of may work because of it formating system... But I would have a FRESH error free hard drive :( :( :(

Even the new Partition Magic might not be no good for my outdated computer.

Example:::: You got errors and windows win not format and tell you to use its Scandskw.exe

Have you ever saw the little square box with the red backslash in it when ever you use Defrag.exe on a drive. If they are there and you know you don't have .dat files on that drive that means that there is un-movable files on that drive.... TRICK FILES.... The bad files that causes even more error on the disk down the line.

Defrag C:\ and you will see them ... Those are the good ones that windows use... .dat file un-movable or something like that...

I got EMPTY drives that show those boxes so it take a SERIOUS tool to really clean that stuff up...

Hope i gave a clear picture of what i am trying to do.....

To the pros I hope it don't sound insulting the way i had to descive things. .... I know no better way . ...

Thanks

cmax
Posted on 2003-05-14 22:13:53 by cmax
Hey guys

I think i found something....

I founded a program called KillDisk at www.zdnet.com ...... go to download and .....type..... DRIVE

I think this will do the trick but while reading their help file it say that when we use the Windows Delete command it only rename the file so Windows can not find it.

I remember hearing something about this in the pass from others.

This make me think about our API calls... Is the job really getting done or is there a better call that we should use....

Thar's another issue.

ANYWAY, if you use it be very carefully not to kill the WHOLE disk ... because it seems very serious in dos mode which is even BETTER to get the job done....
Posted on 2003-05-15 01:22:30 by cmax
This drive will not give a computer the REAL 40 GIG's...
What do you mean; your BIOS/OS shows something much smaller.
It's not the 32GB BIOS limit - That causes the BIOS to halt/stall.
It's not the 8.4GB BIOS limit - You're able to use the 20GB.

Do you have all three installed? Just the 20GB and 3GB?

I suggest using only the 20GB. Backup all of your data onto another drive.
Get http://www.lnx-bbc.org/download.html v2.1
Zero out both partition tables with:


dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda1 bs=512 count=1

Repartion with cfdisk
You can use mkfs.vfat -F32 /dev/hdaX (replace X with partion number (they start with 1)) for all partitions except the first.
You must use the DOS format command for the first partition. This is because the selfish jerks that wrote mkfs.vfat did not make it fully complient - they left out the second partition table, which is part of the DOS filesystem.

Your needs will determine the number and size of partitions. I recommend using a little as possible, but have more than one. Place all your installed programs on the first, but keep your data on another partition.
Posted on 2003-05-15 01:31:16 by eet_1024
Yeah, delete changes the first byte of the name to 0xE5 (I don't no if it does that for the long name too).

undelete.exe (which was in DOS 6, but not in 7.1 (Win98, I don't know if 95 has it)) lets you change that first byte to something that isn't special.

It does have two down sides. First, what do you do when you delete a directory full of files with names that differ only by the first letter. Second, if the space used by the deleted file is taken by a new file, you're screwed.
Posted on 2003-05-15 01:37:50 by eet_1024
Moved to the Heap : not related to Win32ASM at all.
Posted on 2003-05-15 01:40:20 by JCP
cmax, are you talking "unmovable files" (system/user.dat, paging file, . . .) or "bad sectors"? If it's just unmovable files, any old format tool will do. If you have bad sectors, you might as well toss the drives - once you got one bad sector, there will be more.

As for format, uncheck "quick format" (or use dos "format /u /c drive:"), and it doesn't really get much better - except if you have tools that allow a real low-level format (some tools that say they do, don't... they just do unconditional/full format, like both windows and dos can do. Harddrive manufacturer tools can sometimes do LLF though).

From your description, it's a bit hard figuring out what your problem really is...


when we use the Windows Delete command it only rename the file so Windows can not find it.

If you delete a file, it goes to the recycle bin. Windows DeleteFile API properly deletes the file. Like eet says, this is done (on fat) by changing the first byte of the filename to a "this file is deleted" char, marking the data area the file used as free. This _is_ deleting the file, not just "hiding" it. Sure, you can sometimes recover file data, but as far as the OS and filesystem are concerned, the file is gone, thus deleted files won't be "unmovable files".

Best thing to do is probably to back up all data, remove all partitions, create partition table from fresh (and be vary of partitionmagic - it can sometimes do some pretty bad stuff), then do a full format of the created partitions (format /u /c). If any bad sectors are reported during the format, time to toss the drive.
Posted on 2003-05-15 02:19:22 by f0dder
My fault. KillDisk seem that is design to wipe the whole disks and it say it will stop when it find disk errors... So it's worthless in my case... I can do that with Segates software...


eet_1024

I had a 3 or 4 gig that came with my computer years ago. Than i got a 20 gig and it worked well for years. I than got the 40 gig and it would only install as a 20 gig because 95 must have a limit. I don't use all three. The other two went bad because of something i did wrong back than...

Also I just wanted to get a bigger drive.. The 40 gig.


I'm just going to have to buy a box of 500meg zips ... Backup my drive than let Segate software fix the disk...

I just thought it was an easer way but being stuck with my 95 i'm trap for now....

I'm going offline to read fully what you have posted and maby try that type of stuff again I did things like that and this before but it is a trip and many days wasted if not weeks for me...

It takes you back to when you first started with installing everything on your on... Something like what people go through trying to put XP on a 386 type stuff ....

Thanks
Posted on 2003-05-15 02:24:28 by cmax