Entire partition table wiped !!!

[JohnE]

My primary master hard drive (a standard EIDE) is about 40GB and is split into 5 partitions. Three of them are bootable (Windows XP, Win 98 and Windows 2000 respectively) and the other 2 are formatted as FAT32 and configured as drives D: and E: (both drives are visible to all 3 OS’s). I also have a further EIDE drive (the secondary master) which is much bigger (about 160GB). The large drive is mainly used for backups – although it contains a single partition of about 31GB which is configured as drive F: (again, F: is visible to all 3 OS’s but I rarely use it).

A few days ago I needed to change my motherboard. Within a day or two, XP and Win2K were up and running but I hadn’t yet got around to Windows 98. What stopped me was the fact that I noticed something very strange about drive F:

XP and 2K could both see it. They both agreed it was 31GB. They both agreed it had 18GB of files and 13GB of free space and they both showed the same volume name. Also, if I changed the volume name, both OS’s reported the changed name so they were obviously looking at the same volume. However, they completely disagreed about the number of files on the drive. Windows XP said there were over 5000 files but Win2K said less than 4000. Even just in the root directory, XP said there were 605 files whereas 2K said only 283. Both OS’s were configured not to hide any files and running scandisk (under both OS’s) revealed no problems. After scratching my head for a few hours, I came to the conclusion that the FAT must be somehow corrupted. Although I didn’t need anything from Drive F:, I copied all its files onto a spare partition (on the same drive) and reformatted F:. Booting up into Windows 2000, I checked that Win2K could see the correct number of files and I set about copying all of them back to the newly formatted F: After only a few files I saw a message box saying “Error 1392” and had to re-boot…. And that’s when the problems started. The entire partition table for my 160GB drive (16 partitions!) had been totally wiped!!!

Fortunately, Partition Magic has recovered everything except for drive F: and the spare partition but I don’t understand how this happened. Does Windows 2000 have a problem with large drives? If so, why has it never shown up until now? Could the problem be with my new motherboard? I think I’ve loaded all the drivers (the mobo is an Asus A7V8X-X) but should I have loaded some special drivers for handling a 160GB drive? My old mobo used the same chipset and I don’t remember having to load anything special. How can an entire drive get completely wiped like this???

[JohnE]

Well I don't know what caused it but i think I've found the problem, in case it rings any bells with anyone.....

About 20 minutes after posting the above, the exact same thing happened again. I tried to write to the upper part of the 160GB drive (via Windows 2000) and then discovered the entire partition table wiped...!

I then realised that whilst Windows XP was correctly reporting the drive (i.e. the physical drive) as being 157GB, Windows 2000 seemed to think it was only 131GB. I've now wiped the entire drive and recreated the partitions. At the moment, both OS's agree that the drive is 157GB, so I'm hoping for the best...

I reckon this must be connected somehow to my motherboard upgrade because I'm certain I would have noticed this problem before now. Why exactly it's happened though is a total mystery

[Jason425]

Didn't I tell you that motherboard sucked?
Or was it somebody else...
Anyway, it might have something to do with the file system

[Dragon]

try finding a dos boot disk, then you can find out exactly what is on the disk. I didnt think 2K was able to recognise large partitions, which may account for your 131GB partition. On the other hand... I dont understand how your Mobo would be responsible for the funny activity of windows. I did, however, always think that if you were to do something so radical as to replace your Mobo, youd have to repartition and reformat your HDDs anyway. Id say find out which OS recognises more of your stuff, back it up, and then Reinstall and start clean.

[Uranium-235]

2k can reconize large partitions (48-bit LBA). You have to have service pack 3 or above installed (current is service pack 4). Your motherboard has to support 48-bit addressing (and yours does). Annnd, you have to enable it in your registry, as described here

[JohnE]

Thanks Uranium,

I came across that article myself (eventually) and it turned out that I didn't have the specified Registry key (which I've now added). I flagged the article up to Asus who've sent me a rather embarrassed reply admitting that they weren't even aware of the problem.

Most of the programs that were having trouble seem to be now working - apart from Partition Magic itself which still zaps the drive if I try to create, delete or rename a partition that begins (or spans) the 131GB boundary.

This afternoon, I'm going to a big computer fair near my home and I'm going to see if I can find an alternative to PM. Acronis (which I'd never heard of) has been recommended to me

[JohnE]

Originally Posted by Jason425

Didn't I tell you that motherboard sucked?

Well, you were right.... I've been using my Asus A7V8X-X for about 3 months now and it's just about the worst motherboard I've ever come across. My PC locks up unexpectedly at least 6 times a day whereas previously, I could run my PC for days or even weeks without any problems.

The old, Gigabyte motherboard was great (apart from noisy fans) but Gigabyte as a company weren't very impressive. When I tried to get some replacement fans from them, they just ignored me.

Time to spend some more money. Anyone know of a good motherboard from a good company (not ASUS, please!!) Must be able to support an ageing 1.5v AGP graphics board (AGP 4.0?). At a pinch, I could upgrade the graphics card but I'd prefer not to.

[Uranium-235]

As far as I know, there's no such thing as AGP 4.0, and with the rate PCI-Express is becoming popular, there probably never will be

the most you can get now a days as AGP 3.0/8x

AGP 3.0 is 1.5v/0.8v

Most motherboards these days are AGP 3.0, if it's 8x, it's generally going to be 3.0

do you know if your card is AGP 4x or 8x?

[Jason425]

i'm all for picking on ASUS, but my current board is an ASUS, and all my previous boards have been asus, and they have been good to me. However, I haven't owned an amd asus board. So I guess it's a little bit different.

[JohnE]

Originally Posted by Uranium-235

As far as I know, there's no such thing as AGP 4.0,

[...]

do you know if your card is AGP 4x or 8x?

Yes, you're right - I was thinking of AGP 4x. It's a 1.5v board anyway - not a 0.8v one.

Originally Posted by Jason425

all my previous boards have been asus, and they have been good to me. However, I haven't owned an amd asus board. So I guess it's a little bit different.

The other thing is possibly the BIOS. By coincidence, all my previous BIOS's have been AMI but this one happens to be an Award BIOS. My previous Gigabyte board blew up and I picked this one because it was virtually identical to the old one (even the same chipset). Therefore I could keep my old processor, old graphics card, old EIDE hard drives etc.

I'll have to do something though.... I can't live with a mobo that crashes 6 times a day. It's even corrupted some important data files but fortunately I had backups!!