Gentlemen Goodmorniing,

First the bad news....Partition Magic has *$&%^#@ up my computer 5 times...when it tries to partition my c:drive it comes up 983 to many errors and..."drum roll please" ... The good news is," 5 times I have been able to recover my computer form an image on my external  HD....so I am no longer a ghost (virgin)hahahahahaha..

Anyone have any tricks up their sleave on how I can get PM to work.....Is it my data that it is havin trouble with or the hard drive itself?

Hope someone can stear me in the right direction, All searches on the net seem to lead to no ultimate solution....

Night Owl,

WELL...since I have the "hardware" I'd say ghost got her cherry popped  

PartitionMagic (PM) version you are using?

Norton PartitionMagic
Version 8.05   (Build 1371)  5/5/2004

Using Windows interface for PM - YES

HDD type--IDE or SATA? - 120 GB Ultra ATA/100 HD ( 7200RPM)

Exact error #'s and/or message? ERROR 983...To many error's

Everything seems to check out okay....Should I ask for my money back since it (partition magic) does not work on my drive.

They (norton) should have some kind of testing tool for a potential buyer of their PM software to see if it will be compatible before they sell  the program knowing that it may not work on certain drives, what do you think?

I would try the DOS based PM as well before giving up!  I made some bootable floppy disks of PM put them in and have no idea how to use the information contained?

BTW when I run a chkdsk...it flashes by so quick there is no way to see the results, any suggestions?

Oh another error that PM sez is that it can't execute the batch files...

Also, why would PM care about my files and batches and sectors... All it should be concerned about is making the #^$damed partitions and let me worry about that other S&*^. Afterall I bought it to make frigging PARTITIONS not to be a HD COP for Christssake.

goober

Quote:

I've been out of town for a few days--so slow to respond--if you created a bootable floppy with the DOS version of PM on it, you should have been able to boot to DOS and load PM's DOS graphical user interface--looks similar the to Windows interface as far as graphing how the partitions are laid out on the various HDD's.

But, I see you have moved on to try other solutions--take care!

Congrats. That first image restoration is indeed very satisfying.

Regarding PM, horror stories abound.

The main thing to remember about PM is that you want to make it easy as possible for it to do its job. Some ways are:

1. don't que up a bunch of tasks. rather perform ONE AT A TIME, rebooting after each (PM often reboots for you).

2. Off-load any files you can .. especially big ones.

3. delete any files you can.

4. defrag.

5. pray

6. talk pretty to PM. I've noticed it *really* likes when you whisper sweet-nuthins into its ear.

of course, it depends what you want to do. but a common task is shrinking one partition while enlarging an adjacent partition. then you are dealing with *two* partitions.

Hello ministrator,

Thank you for catering to the less fortunate of us (I should speak for myself) who haven’t been blessed with a techno savvy library of meaningful thoughts.

Your well laid out articles of advice are extremely beneficial as well as inspiring...Okay that's enough wisperin of  sweet-nuthins in your ear, LOL...

I should make a donation  

Brain,

It was chkdsk /f ...that goes by rather quickly...and it is reporting *0 bad sectors*

I have run chkdsk /r...and it does take along time to complete. I'll look for the results in Winlogon.

Thanks for the help and advise one and all !!!  

To cut to the chase.....

NO program that deals with the hard drive, that's worth it's salt, will ever perform on a HD with errors on it.  PM8 won't, Ghost won't, yada, yada, yada!

So before you go off half cocked, so to speak, "Clean Up Yor Mess!"
Delete every piece of garbage off of your hard drive, before you do anything else with it.
That makes chkdsk or any drive maintenance program run much faster.

Most drive manufacturers have Drive Diagnostic software that you can download and run on your HD to ferret out problems.  Seagate's "Sea Tools" is a good example.

Then there's aways the industry Standard, "Spinrite 6".  It can diagnose and even repair a drive with bad spots on it.

Personally, as a tech, I'm very glad that PM8 is intelligent enough to NOT try to repartition a HD with errors on it.  The result of doing that could be disastrous!
It will also error out on a weird or non-standard format.
Likewise Ghost.....I don't want to backup errors.
When Ghost, for example, errors out on me, I first run Chkdsk /f on that drive, then Sea Tools if necessary and finally "Spinrite 6" for diagnostics and repair.
If after all that the drive still is having problems I check into an RMA. (Drive Replacement)

Just my 2 cents worth.

Merry Christmas Everyone!
The Shadow