Does anyone know of any master boot record (mbr) sector utility that will clear or erase the DiskID field on an external USB hard drive?

Several problems relating to Ghost 9/10 Copy Drive feature or Ghost 9/10 backup/restore feature depend upon booting from the Ghost emergency boot Recovery Environment CD.  As discussed by Dan Goodell in other threads and at his website, booting problems and recognition problems often occur because the DiskID field on the new drive (or external drive) conflict with the new boot environment.

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/partsigs.htm

I've read about ways to clear the DiskID field on internal hard drives, but never for an external USB drive.

Any suggestions or ideas?  Most sector utilities are DOS based and do not or will not touch a USB drive.  I've never seen a Windows XP utility that will modify the boot record for an external USB drive.

Ghost4me.John

This will most likely work with your USB HDD--just substitute for Ghost with the DOS based disk editor:

A Better USB 2.0 DOS Driver for Ghost + More!

If you have Norton SystemWorks 2003 (and probably earlier versions), you can find a nice DOS disk editor by Symantec on the installation CD here:

X:\NU\DISKEDIT.EXE

John, I'm still not clear on how this differs from changing the drive letter from K: to F: in Disk Management. Once changed to F: it will keep that letter.

I'm with you now. I misunderstood your previous post and wondered why you wanted to change from K: to F: in Windows.

John, in your Reply #3, could you explain what hex 01B8 means? How does that correlate with BE E7 FC AF?

Ghost4me.John

Thanks for your ongoing research into this problem with Ghost 10's Recovery CD and USB HDD's.

I'm reporting back with the results of my testing on a DOS based disk editor to access a USB HDD to erase it's disk id:

Erase DiskID on external USB drive--Reply #2

I suggested Symantec's *DiskEdit* program in reply #2 above as one option, but because not everyone will have access to that, I also looked around for something that's available to download from the Net.

Dan Goodell's site has a page which lists some useful utilities, one of which is a DOS based, freeware, disk edititing program--*PTS Disk Editor*:

Useful Tools for Our Project

Download PTS Disk Editor here: 

PTS Disk Editor

(Be careful with this program--it is live and HOT--it will edit your HDD if you make a change and tell it to save the changes!--no warnings!!!  Symantec's *DiskEdit* program starts in *Read Only* mode, and you have to manually change it to allow for writing to a disk.)

I used my DOS boot disk with the Panasonic USB DOS drivers on it to boot to the A:\ prompt.  I had saved the *PTS Disk Editor* program file (de.exe) to my G:\ partition, so did a drive change from A:\ to G:\ by typing *g:* at the A:\ prompt.

At the G:\ prompt, typed *de.exe* and got this:



I have two internal HDD's (drives 1 and 2), and I have two USB 2.0 external HDD's hooked up to a powered USB 2.0 Hub (drives 3 and 4).

I then selected drive #4, my Iomega USB 2.0 40 GB external HDD:



I went to Sector 62, which is where Ghost 2003 *marks* a HDD the first time it sees that HDD (in DOS, you can refuse to let Ghost 2003 *mark* the HDD, but if using the Windows interface--you must let Ghost 2003 *mark* the HDD, or else it will not allow you to proceed with the Ghost procedure you're setting up).

I then zeroed out the Ghost 2003 *marking*, and replaced it with *IOMEGA USB 2 HDD* to test if the disk editor would properly write to a USB HDD in DOS:



Everything worked without any problems.

I also tested the Symantec *DiskEdit.exe* DOS disk editor program, and it worked just fine as well:





This is my other USB HDD--I have never allowed Ghost 2003 to *mark* this HDD, so you see that Sector 62 is *empty*--all *zeroes*.

Nightowl,

Thanks for the clarification and information.  I stand corrected about DOS utilities not being able to write directly to physical sectors on USB drives.

Now users have 3 programs that can be used:

PTS Disk Editor (DOS based if DOS USB drivers used)
Symantec DiskEdit (DOS based if DOS USB drivers used)
roadkil Sectedit (XP based)

So, is sector 62 the Ghost 2003 equivalent of DiskID for Windows XP/Ghost 10?

I remember that Windows 98 had problems remembering drive letters for devices.  I had just assumed that XP corrected that somehow.  Later I found out about 01B8 (DiskID) field.