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- Path: sparky!uunet!gatech!rpi!ghost.dsi.unimi.it!univ-lyon1.fr!frmop11!psuvm!ucf1vm!cop80196
- Organization: University of Central Florida--Computer Services
- Date: Friday, 25 Dec 1992 21:15:33 EST
- From: Bill Laird <COP80196@UCF1VM.BITNET>
- Message-ID: <92360.211533COP80196@UCF1VM.BITNET>
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
- Subject: Re: Need help. Hard drive failure.
- References: <1992Dec25.202029.17250@netcom.com>
- Lines: 22
-
- In article <1992Dec25.202029.17250@netcom.com>, shawr@netcom.com (rich shaw)
- says:
-
- > I need some help on this. I have a conner 3204F IDE drive which
- >refuse to respond to the fdisk command. I can create the partitons under
- >fdisk, but everytime I save and exit the fdisk command, the infomation is
- >lost. So, do I need to low-level format my hard drive (and how) or the
- >hard drive is dead? Thanks in advance.
-
- There is an undocumented trick that you may want to try with fdisk. When
- you involk fdisk, use the /MBR switch: ex. fdisk /MBR
-
- /MBR stands for master boot record. Apparently, when fdisk does it's
- partitioning, it does some sort of signature check in the master boot
- record. If that signature isn't there (because of a virus, or other
- serious problem) fdisk will not work. The /MBR switch tells fdisk to go
- ahead and partition even if the signature check fails.
-
- IMHO, a low level format is probably is not necessary. Let me know how this
- works out.
-
- Bill
-