FDISK and partitioning problems

[ElGato]

Hello.

I tried to clean up my 6G hard disk last night and wen into FDISK to delete the two partitions so that I can recreate it as one. Fdisk allowed me to delete the primary partition but did not let me delete the extended. I thought that it was weird so I just exited FDISK thinking I'll just go back in and delete the extended. Well no such luck. It now refuses to let me back into FDISK. After FDISK asks me about enabling FAT32 support it just hangs. How can I get my hard disk back?

EG

P.S. This drive is completely empty, as in no data.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I'm assuming that you ran FDISK from the HDD, if so, use a boot-up floppy and run FDISK from there and you should have no problems.

 

[HappyPuppy]

Are you booting with a DOS boot floppy? This is obviously your primary problem right now because you can't do anything until you get into FDISK.

After you get into FDISK, in order to delete the extended partition you must delete the logical DOS partition(s) first and then delete the extended partition.

 

[ElGato]

This is the second HDD in my system so I can boot the PC just fine. Then I tell windows to shut down and restart in the DOS mode. Then I start FDISK from my boot drive which is C: the problem drive is D:

The problem appears to be the fact that FDISK is unable to handle the fact that this drive has an extended partition but not the primary one, so it just hangs with CPU utilization at 100%.

You see I get into FDISK just fine, then it asks me if I wanna enable the support for large drives. After that question it just sits there.

EG

 

[PAT31850]

Try pulling the cable on ide one and plug only drive two into ide one. Reboot wfloppy and try thatway.

 

[AKA]

Create a startup disk and boot of of it.. use its fdisk.

By the way.. fdisk wont let you delete a primary partition before deleting logical then extended first. It will give you msg that other need to be deleted first.

 

[Archknight]

Since it is your second driver, try any 3rd party software yet.

 

[ElGato]

OK here are the replies one bu one:

A.K.A. I booted off of a startup disk and used its FDISK the result was exactly the same. I'm sure you are correct in what you are saying about deleting extended before primary, however, this is micro$oft software we are talking about here.

Archknight I tried using Partition Magic on the drive it gives me some error message about start of the drive and does not allow me to manipulate the geometry of the drive

PAT I'll try using your suggestion of pulling the cable tomorrow and see if it is successful, although to be perfectly honest I'm not very optimistic.

I went to WD web site and downloaded their dlgdiag utility. When I ran it from a DOS window it informed that it could not find any drives on my system. This is a WD drive, anyone knows of a better utility out there? I'm beginning to think that I need to lower level format this drive.
What do you guys think?

EG

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Do what PAT31850 said, but since it's a WD make sure you configure it to the neutral storage position jumper settings that they ship it with, otherwise, it won't work properly when it's the only drive on the cable. Let us know how your getting on.

 

[Turkey22]

Sounds like an awful lot of trouble for an old 6 gig that doesn't have any information on it anyway. I'd get a new drive.